


Pernicious Petite

by Like_a_Hurricane



Series: Pernicious Prompting [11]
Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, short prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-24 00:42:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 23,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Like_a_Hurricane/pseuds/Like_a_Hurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a series of unconnected smaller fills I've written to jump-start my brain's idea-engine. Each chapter is a different one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Whispers in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to plumadesatada‘s alternate prompt: "Write anything you want in 300 words or less without mentioning anything related to the sense of sight. No colours, no seeing movements or expressions, only touches and voice and smell, etc. It’s more challenging than it sounds."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mmm... I love the really challenging and thought-provoking ones. Especially short and sweet as this.

Pepper used to rest her head on his chest just to the left of the arc reactor, to better hear his heart. By contrast, Loki’s ear is always at the edge of it the power-generating marvel of technology over his heart: half on flesh, half on tech. Loki’s skin against his is warm, though his every exhale is oddly cool.

“It sings,” the god of mischief says softly. “A complex melody of self-sustaining power, with your heartbeat as percussion.” Tony can feel a smile against his skin: softer than usual, less wicked.

“Self-sustaining power has a melody?”

“Melodies and other patterns in music, can be defined by mathematics in terms of rise and fall, wave-forms and so forth,” Loki mutters. “Magic is much the same, with energy and power and wave-forms. One just has to know where the strings, where the metaphorical command lines, are.” Fingers trace the outer edge of the arc reactor.

“You’ve been researching.”

“If I’m to decipher you, I need some terminology, do I not?”

Tony feels an absurd, warm and tingling sensation at that: more tender than sexual, even with the god of mischief’s hands wandering over his skin. “I thought  _I_  was deciphering  _you_. That’s how this started.”

Loki moves up his body then: lithe and far too elegant. “Oh was it?” Loki’s smile regains it’s wickedness in full, where he presses it to the corner of Tony’s jaw now. “Funny. I thought it was when I discovered I would have to take a different approach entirely, to swaying your heart.”

At that, the genius inhales sharply. “What sort of approach?”

“Earning it,” Loki whispers. “Do let me know when I’m worthy.”

Tony shivers. “Do I get to have yours?”

“You already do.”

Tony swallows tightly. “You’ve  _been_  worthy.”


	2. Finally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to a one-word prompt from a Tumblr anon: "You asked so I'm there xP I'll just give you a single word prompt. Just roll with it... 'Finally'"

Loki stared at the All-Father for a long moment, his expression utterly blank and his whole body unnaturally still. It was difficult to tell whether or not he was still breathing. “You will not touch him.”

“What makes you think I have any intention of doing such a thing?” Odin inquired, sounding almost amused.

“Past precedents, and he’s the _favored_ son,” the trickster drawled, eyes narrowing. “I have not brought any genuinely dangerous chaos or mayhem to Asgard since my return, have made no further attempts to destroy worlds, but I will not hesitate to begin again. You know yourself from previous experience that you cannot hold me, and Asgard is at a _great_ disadvantage without me.”

Odin folded his arms across his chest, examining his younger son closely. “There is no past precedent for this.”

A thin, bemused line appeared between Loki’s brows, then. He considered that response for several moments, but still could make little sense of it. “Dr. Jane Foster. Are you losing your memory in your old age, father? This is most unlike you.”

“Dr. Jane Foster is a brilliant woman, and a credit to her world, but she could not brave all that comes with being a citizen of Asgard. She had faced no prior tests comparable to those I gave, in her life back on earth. Anthony Stark has faced _many_ , and has _conquered_ them.”

Slowly, Loki’s expression bled over from suspicion to shock. “What... what are you saying, precisely?” It was a genuine effort for him to have to ask for such clarification so directly.

Odin smirked faintly. “I think, finally, that you have started to get it.”

Loki opened his mouth to respond to that, then shut it again. He cleared his throat quietly. “You’re fine with the whole theft bit then?”

“No. I am not, but I do hope in time you may trust me enough to know you may just _ask_ rather than lawbreaking.”

The younger trickster smirked back, then. “Even knowing this, will not prevent me from further mischief and mayhem. I am not yours to command as I once was.”

Odin considered that, eyes narrowing. “What are you, then?”

“Myself. I belong only to me. I serve only my own interests.” He rolled his eyes a bit. “Obviously.”

“And if we have need of you?”

Loki grinned viciously. “Then you’d better get past your pride and learn to ask, rather than simply demand.”

Odin shook his head. “I may consider.”

“Do that... father.” The god of lies then bowed, not so deeply as a subject to his king, even a prince to his king, should, and vanished.


	3. Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt from a Tumblr anon: "Break"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's like she/he read my diary. If I had one. (I don't.)

It was a little problem they both had, in regards to their people skills and the limitations thereof: a habit of pushing, prodding, just to see how far they could get, how much they could drag into the light before the person they prodded and pushed simply  _snapped_. It was something that had driven Pepper away, at times, when he went too far; although Tony had been rather more careful with her, and tried to keep her from noticing when he was doing it, or doing it in such a way it was at least entertaining enough that she couldn’t hold it against him.

Not so with Loki. Loki might flinch, might even show genuine hurt, when a particular chord was struck too close to home, but he never backed down, and he never got scared off. It was difficult to tell, at times, just how offended he really was, because there was a glitter in his look, under the anger and viciousness, of something like fascination, which would explain why he never pulled away, never told Tony to stop.

No, Loki never tried to stop him. The trickster seemed more content to strike back, with just a bit more vitriol. It should have been unnerving. It should, and did, piss Tony off like nothing else, to be called an  _addict_ in such a way that he could not disprove or deny because Loki drew out the details and the evidence like a surgeon laying out his tools, to have his every act of apparent heroism dissected and every selfish motivation behind it pulled out just enough so that he could see them––see the viscera of his own inner workings and watch blood drip from them. It hurt, when that happened, and Tony flinched from it, to have his armor cracked open and pulled apart. So he reached out himself, finding cracks in the armor of a mercurial god of chaos and lies, and broke him open too.

To call him  _broken_ , to call him on his  _lack of self-worth_ , to tell Loki Lie-smith to his face, “You try so hard to hide that you think Thor is superior than you more than anyone down here really does. No matter how many times you drag him down, break his heart, or bring him to his knees, that feeling never goes away, now does it?”

And Loki’s eyes flashed rage and pain, and he stepped closer. “You sound more than a little familiar with such a feeling. Perhaps your displays of greatness, your apparently flippant attitude toward the opinions of others, your constant striving to create things or put events in motion which shock and awe your nigh ever-present audience, are a part of this. And you are still unable to drag yourself out from the shadow of a dead man.”

Tony’s lips parted in something like a snarl, just enough to show a hint of teeth. “You son of a bitch.”

“Oh, yes. But I killed Laufey quite successfully. Hardly difficult.”

“Doesn’t mean your not in the shadow of the one who actually cares about you, but at least you seem to be more practical about that one, princess. You don’t even try to outshine him––just occasionally fail miserably to usurp him, so I hear.”

“Whereas you can hardly take care of those close to your heart, so much weaker than yourself, but you see them as superior to you––for they are more moral, more good, than you could ever be.”

“Unlike you,” Tony murmured, low and thoughtful.

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

The inventor knew, by rights, that he should want to kill this man, this mad god.

He didn’t.

“I can’t scare you off.”

Loki snorted. “Of course not.”

“And I can’t break you.” He sounded intrigued, tilting his head a bit to one side.

“Nor I you, surprisingly,” the trickster admitted, that glitter of fascination visible again. “I could tear you apart physically, of course, but I find myself disinclined to.”

“Oh?”

“No. No, there are much more pleasurable ways to break you, in a physical sense.” He ran a fingertip from Tony’s cheekbone, and down, tracing the line of his jaw to stop at his chin.

Tony’s mouth went a bit dry. He knew for damn sure that he shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t feel arousal hit him like a flash of heat from a suddenly-opened forge. “If you think you can manage it. I’m pretty skilled there, too.”

“Hmm,” the trickster rumbled, “show me.”

It wasn’t a good idea. It was dangerous, and would hurt, and there wouldn’t be much to stop the god of mischief pulling the arc reactor out of his chest before he could do a damn thing about it, but after twenty minutes of the most cruel things the pair of them could come up with to say to each other being said, Loki distinctly seemed to have no interest in that.

But there were other ways they could try to break each other.

And Tony wanted to try this one, right now.

“Then I need you closer,” the inventor challenged, and gripped Loki’s tie, pulling him down hard. Loki let him, fingers on Tony’s chin tilting his head back so that the god could capture his mouth at the absolute perfect angle, that silver tongue soon taking the mortal’s breath away.

Tony pulled him closer, his own eagerness surprising them both.

It hadn’t occurred to him before, after years of cracking people open, how much he’d wished someone would put the same effort into cracking him.

It broke open a well of desire he couldn’t have anticipated.

Oh, this was a bad idea.

They both knew it, but neither of them cared. They loved to court that which might kill them, after all. That was another little quirk they seemed to share.

How perfect.


	4. You Knew It Would Be Strip-Poker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to the prompt: "Eyefucking/flirting over some kind of cardgame/poker! :D" from clareithromycin on Tumblr.

On the list of historically bad ideas Tony Stark had unleashed upon himself and the Avengers, introducing Loki to poker and persuading the others that “just one game of strip-poker, for fun, I mean, c’mon: what could happen?” was probably fated to make it into the top-twenty. It wouldn’t be so bad, he supposed, if Natasha and Clint weren’t both card-sharks in their own right, as seemed to be a required skill for any S.H.I.E.L.D. field agent, covert agent, or any of them really. Tony wondered if they had a training course, and whether JARVIS could get him the lesson plans from it.

Steve had folded early and fled not long after Tony had started cat-calling everyone. Steve had been in just boxer-briefs.

Bruce had no shame, they all discovered quickly, and was now just sitting in a chair, naked, watching the show with considerable amusement.

Loki had humored them by wearing relatively normal Midgardian attire rather than full armor. Tony had only cheated a little it, by wearing a couple more layers than usual, plus the thin form-fitting bodysuit he wore under the newest versions of his armor. Now, he was wearing  _just_  that bodysuit. Luckily, the top half could be separated from the bottom, so that meant that he still had two articles of clothing to go. Less luckily, the articles in question couldn’t hide a damn thing in the arousal department, and if this kept up, that would soon be a problem.

The “this” in question was to do with the looks he and Loki had been shooting each other all night. Some glaring, some leering, all of them with sexual tension so blatant, Tony felt like he could reach out and pluck at it, and it’d hum loud enough to rattle all the furniture in the room.

It was just himself, the archer, the spymaster, and the trickster god playing now. And Bruce watching.

“This is better than television,” he’d said, when Clint had asked him about it in exasperation a few minutes earlier.

Natasha had gotten determined since then, apparently, and finally succeeded in literally beating the pants off of Loki, who now sat in his chair in green silk boxers, and a black button-down shirt with narrow gold pinstripes: top two buttons undone just to be maddening, tailoring too elegant and form-fitting to be fair, and sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The shirt, presumably, was Natasha’s next target.

Tony hoped so. It was the (only very slightly) lesser of two evils.

Natasha herself was down to her bra, and a pair of leather pants that everyone at the table liked. The reason they liked the pants was about the same reason everyone at the table aside from Natasha was 95% sure she wasn’t wearing anything under them.

Clint was down to just his boxers, and looking twitchy. When the next hands were all dealt, he folded, “For the sake of what remains of my dignity, and to avoid sights I can’t unsee.” He’d then strolled out of the room almost, but not quite, casually.

Bruce sat back in his chair, stretching his legs out, crossed at the ankles.

Tony lost the top half of his body suit.

Natasha looked Loki up and down. “The boxers.”

The mad inventor didn’t quite stifle a noise in the back of his throat that might have been dismay, or arousal, or warning. The flicker of something akin to jealousy that he felt frankly shocked him.

Loki held his gaze as he lifted a hand and snapped his fingers.

The green silk boxers appeared on the table at Natasha’s elbow, neatly folded.

“I fold,” Tony said, his voice only a little harsh.

“We haven’t dealt the next hand yet,” Natasha said, her tone teasing.

“It’s a pre-emptive fold.”

Tilting his head back just a little, and letting the tip of his tongue flick out across the curve of his lower lip, Loki still didn’t drop his gaze, but he did arch one eyebrow. “I do like it when you surrender.”

Natasha looked between them both quickly, her determined expression shifting into a slightly more wary one. Then she snorted and shook her head at them. “Tony, you can leave now.”

“Question is, how much do you want me to see her naked at the moment, Loki?” Tony muttered, smirking a little.

Loki considered, a flicker of something dangerous in his look. “Have I been wrong to trust your self-control so far?”

“No. But I’d think you’d still prefer to have my eyes on you, and the best way to do that would be to get rid of that shirt, too,” the inventor quipped.

The trickster smirked slowly. Without looking away, he said simply, “I fold.” Then he raised his hand, and snapped his fingers, and both of them vanished from the table.

Natasha and Bruce looked at both suddenly-empty seats for a moment. Loki’s shirt and the rest of Tony’s bodysuit, notably, had both stayed on their chairs. They then shot each other a look. Bruce burst into giggles for a moment, helplessly. Natasha just smirked and began counting up all of her winnings.


	5. Movies Norse Gods Will Giggle Throughout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt from lira-of-jupiter on Tumblr: "Tolkien"
> 
> Very short. Also inspired by [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1TJnDG61_Y).

At some point, and he would later blame the particularly fine mead Loki had brought along with him on that particular visit, and not in a small quantity, Tony got it into his head to show Loki the Lord of the Rings films.

He wasn’t sure Loki had stopped his intermittent giggling since the first Hobbit appeared. When the elves showed up as well, the trickster resorted to covering his mouth with one hand to stifle laughter. The character Legolas, in particular, and the whole Elvish language that caused these smothering-methods to fail.

Tony found out that night that it Allspeak translated it fine, and also that different languages did indeed sound different to Loki’s ears: like different accents.

When he had Loki attempt to imitate the accent that seemed to cause him fits whenever anyone spoke Elvish, Tony lost the ability to take the Lord of the Rings movies at all seriously.

Because the last time he’d heard anyone talk like that, it had been on a show that was the Scottish equivalent of Jerry Springer, and he hadn’t been able to understand a word of it then, either.


	6. Cerulean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt: "Cerulean"
> 
> I can't tell you how hard it was to resist a "cerulean-orbs" joke.

The arc reactor’s glow, and the particular cerulean-blue shade thereof, should have seemed cold. The light of it gave shadows an icy blue tinge that reminded Loki of Jötunheim at times, when he awoke from some of his quieter nightmares, but the impression seldom lasted long; although it did cause him to move closer to the light, and Tony’s body, seeking more warmth, or at least more distance between himself and the cold.

The device had a faint hum to it: not audible, but senses attuned to magic could also detect high-energy output such as the arc reactor, with an effort. Loki hadn’t thought to put an effort into listening for that unique, soft hum until he’d been in Tony Stark’s bed half a dozen times. It was barely a whisper, so fine was the device’s construction, to generate the power. The power itself was louder, seeming to breathe with the slightest hint of a buzz to the sound.

Blue light. Warm sound. And Tony Stark.

Perhaps the light did not seem so cold, because Loki’s nightmares were so much more infrequent when he slept in close proximity to it.


	7. Circumstantial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt: "Circumstantial"
> 
> I chose to give Loki a chance to be the one declaring "It's not what it looks like!" for a change.

“This is not what it looks like!”

Tony’s first coherent thought was _Isn’t that my line?_ though it was followed shortly by, _It damn well better not be._ The look of something genuinely akin to fear in Loki’s expression for a moment before his mask returned was intriguing, though. Until he recalled just how used to being disbelieved the god of lies generally was.

The woman in Loki’s lap only looked amused, however. She wore a form Tony hadn’t seen before––with hair of chestnut silk and more delicate, feline facial features––but Amora’s eyes were the same. “Perhaps you really _do_ care for this one.”

“Drop you glamour,” Loki hissed tersely, “and leave. I should skin you for imitating Sigyn alone.”

“But you need me.” She sat up, less closely nestled against his chest, her face closer to his. “And you wouldn’t want to break our truce now, would you? Not without your magic as you are.”

Loki’s eyes narrowed in a glare. “Begone, or I’ll bludgeon you, truce or no.”

“Your pet Avengers wouldn’t like that,” Amora challenged.

“I would,” Tony said lightly. “Get off my trickster, or I’ll turn on a magic-repressive field and we’ll both make you regret it.”

Amora frowned at the human inventor. “You would dare patronize me?”

Loki took that opportunity, with her a bit off-balance and her attention elsewhere, to giver her a firm but harmless shove, removing her from his lap.

Catching herself with casual grace, Amora laughed. “Your brother’s weakness of late has often been a weakness for mortals, specific ones in particular. I wonder who might be interested to know you’ve a similar vulnerability.” She then vanished.

Jaw clenched, Loki rose to his feet and dusted himself off, muttering curses under his breath in a dead language or two. He almost wasn’t aware of Tony moving until the man was close enough to touch, but relaxed a little when the inventor came to stand before him, settling hands on either side of his waist.

“You could’ve pushed her off sooner.”

“I do so get caught up in certain mind games. She had no effect on me, save to inspire anger.”

“I know.” Tony drew him closer. “I’ve been there.”

Loki smirked. “Just last week as I recall.”

“That was a mission, and-” Tony protested, interrupted by Loki’s finger pressed against his lips.

“Consider us even. And thank you––for trusting me.”

Tony smiled faintly. “No need to thank me for that. You know why I do.”

The god of mischief kissed him then, brief and almost chaste. “I do.”


	8. On Torment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Prompt: Torture -- Restriction: No description of actual physical acts" for omgpurplefattie on Tumblr

Neither of them could ever stand being restricted.

Well, there were some key trust-based exceptions in the heat of certain moments alone together, when some loss of control was needed, but those were a matter of gifts freely given. Such things are always exceptional, with creatures such as Tony Stark and the god of lies and mischief.

Those exceptions, and the trust involved therein, could keep at bay the nightmares of less willing submissions given, sometimes.

But not always.

Not always did the loss of control, the shattering of self, keep to the shadows of memory where it belonged. Old scars would ache. Screams muffled, bitten back.

They both had nightmares, now and again.

And so, close together in the dark with only the faint light of Tony’s heart between them, they took comfort, knowing they were free to come and go here as they pleased. Surely, nothing so restrictive as deep love was here: only matched wits, keen intellects, twisted humor and genius.

Surely.

They were both creatures who could take comfort in little lies to themselves.


	9. Unacceptable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt for Runic: Unacceptable

It’s a tiresome spell, pausing time.

Well, in truth, he’s not pausing time for most of the room: just the wrecked man on the lab table, bleeding and typing code with his few unbroken fingers. Tony Stark, frozen in place, his perception of time passing momentarily suspended as Loki strolls into the room from out of the shadows.

Loki examines Extremis’ coding, reads through every bit of it. He’s been studying it for a few hours, truthfully, ever since he’d seen the footage of Iron Man nearly crushed by the rogue terrorist so altered by the serum.

He is Loki, of Asgard, and he is a very fast learner.

Pulling the keyboard out from under Tony’s hands, he begins making alterations.

Odin All-Father, and the Odinforce he controls, are the source of strength and power for any outsider who would face the challenges and trials to become a citizen of Asgard. That is, presuming that Odin would consider any outsider to be a potentially worthy candidate.

The apples provide longevity. Not power. Not strength. Without that resilience, a mortal given a golden apple would still remain––a little fragile. Not like a natural-born son of Asgard, or even of Jötunnheim. Those races from elsewhere in the nine realms were made of stronger stuff.

Loki knew all about DNA, all about biology. He changed species when it suited him, as a shape-shifter, and every new form taught new lessons about tissues and biochemistry. He knew all about Aesir, and their DNA, their tissues, their structure.

The trickster’s fingers tap quiet as soft rainfall across the keyboard, changing the code, adding extra nutrients and other sources of biological fuel, because Tony’s own body, which would be rebuilt––old tissues consumed to fuel the making of new organs, new muscles and bones––would not have enough matter to support some of the changes Loki added. The human inventor had removed most of the original super-hero package from Extremis, and wisely so: the super-strength, the invulnerabilty, was not designed for the long-term, and came with unpleasant side-effect with long usage, so far as Loki could see. Instead, the god of mischief substituted the subtle differences between Aesir and human structures, and added just a bit of his own magic to the Extremis dose that would be delivered to the inventor: adding some raw power where it mattered, allowing for bending of rules like certain quaint Earthly concepts concerning thermodynamics.

He has not yet asked Tony if he might bite into a stolen apple, but it had crossed his mind many times now. Loki has withheld the offer primarily because he knew that before this, it would not be enough. Not without dread Odin’s blessing, which he had a poor track record for reception of.

Best to give him this, first. Best that they be equals in all but age.

Then...

Then Loki might tell the mad inventor that the thought of Tony Stark, brilliant and beautiful, limited by a human lifetime, would be simply unacceptable to him. And he might offer a gift with potential to outlast both their hearts.

Though he has some faint, vain hope that perhaps it wouldn’t.

Changes made, Loki returns the keyboard to the exact position it had occupied before, under Tony’s hands, and stepped back to watch invisibly from the shadows.

Time started again.

Tony finishes his last line of code with a crooked, pained smile. “There. Now here’s hoping I make it back home. I’ve got a date, after all.” He lay back with a groan as Maya Hansen opened the room’s only door, letting more light in.

In the shadows, Loki smiles faintly, where no one can see the embarrassing amount of hope in his expression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have already been planning to use something like this elsewhere. I shall hint nothing further than that. If you guess, though, you might get a present.


	10. Research

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another, actually older one-word prompt for Runic that I'd forgotten to post here on AO3 before now: "Research"

“For science” was apparently no longer an excuse Thor was altogether carelessly amenable to, where some things were concerned. Not even when Tony widened his eyes and made an effort to appear harmless and adorable.

“You have asked a great number of questions about Jotunns of recent, Tony Stark,” Thor rumbled. “I have to wonder what scientific purpose this may be toward.”

“Research. On extraterrestrial life. And Asgard’s enemies, since the logic follows that if ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ then ‘the enemy of my friend is my enemy’ and all,” Tony responded quickly. “I had enough trouble the one time the Norn stones scattered us across the rest of the realms and I landed in a kingdom of dwarves.”

Thor raised an eyebrow. “The odds of such an event happening again are-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah: slim, I know. By the way, you find out anything about that armor I made, and maybe whether I can borrow it, at least, if-”

“Doubtful, at best,” Thor interrupted.

“Damn.”

“Why do you wish to know the effects of a Jotunn’s touch upon a mortal?”

“I think I just covered that. It’s not like dwarves give instant frostbite.”

The thunder god retained a skeptical expression. “It is not instantaneous, and requires a certain degree of concentration from a Jotunn. Most of them, as I mentioned, do not differ from Aesir overmuch in appearance until they are threatened. In the past, they would only change in coloration and become more durable, as well as cold to the touch, in extreme cold, when in distress, or when they seek to attack. Since the confiscation of their weapon, and the damages done to their world during the war, it is easier for them to maintain their war colors and the cold-endurance that comes with it, most of the time. Their world was not always purely one of ice, though much of it was quite cold by even Aesir standards.”

Tony nodded thoughtfully.

“How does my brother fare these days?”

Caught off-guard, Tony jerked a bit too tellingly at the question and shot Thor a disconcerted look. “Pardon?”

“Is he well?”

“Uhm.” Tony fidgeted a bit.

“Do not lie about this, at least, Tony Stark.”

“He seems fine. Just, uh, odd. He’s usually odd, though.”

“He told you he was Jotunn?”

“It might’ve come up.” He was suddenly glad to be wearing certain bracelets.

Thor’s expression turned shrewdly appraising for a few moments. “You care for him.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Tony said, very quietly.

“Good.” The thunder god stood. “Do not let that get you killed.”

As far as protective older-brother speeches Tony might’ve expected, that admittedly wasn’t one of them, but it suited Loki, he had to admit. “Thanks. Working on it.”

“Does he care for you?”

Tony’s entire expression seemed to twitch, before returning to his more usual carefree mask. “I’m not sure. I think he likes me more than he’d admit, but I’m not exactly trusting that as any sort of safeguard or anything.”

Thor looked thoughtful. “I only ask that particular question because it might explain a great deal if he did.” He then inclined his head in Tony’s direction in a not-quite-bow, and strode from the room.

The inventor pondered that for a few moments, caught between feeling warmed, and feeling distinctly unnerved.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For mrsmycroft on Tumblr: "The difference between sympathy and empathy."

Nightmares were never exactly “convenient” no matter when they occurred. Really, it was only a matter of time before one of them happened when he wasn’t alone in his bed. It had happened before, and Tony had a number of techniques for brushing it off, if he managed to actually wake up his bedmate, which was even more infrequent.

Loki Lie-smith was a very light sleeper, though, compared to most humans; although Tony hadn’t expected to need to brush him off. The trickster wasn’t known for his caring, sympathetic nature, and this––whatever more-than-one-night-stand (this was number eight, not that Tony was counting, and so what if there hadn’t been anyone else other than Loki since the first time up against a wall in his lab) thing they had going wasn’t that sort of thing. Really. It wasn’t.

Except that he’d woken up with a ragged gasp and had moved to sit up quickly, only for Loki’s arm about his waist to tighten slightly, tugging him closer. Loki nuzzled at his ear with a low hum that was more soothing than Tony wanted to acknowledge.

“Let me go.” He was shaking a little.

The trickster’s hum trailed off and he said quietly, “I do not think so.”

Bemusement would be a mild word for Tony’s response to that. “Why not?” He struggled a bit, managing to almost pull away, only to find himself unexpectedly pinned firmly to the mattress, Loki looming over him.

“You spoke in your sleep.”

Tony’s throat tightened. “And you’re morbidly curious?"

Loki’s expression, difficult to read even in good light, was a fairly good mask in the thin bluish light of the arc reactor. “You tried to speak, but your lips would not open, I should say: as though something in your dream prevented you.”

 _Paralysis. Obie. When he took the reactor._ “You think I need sympathy?”

“No.” Loki took one of the inventor’s hands, pressing Tony’s fingertips to his face, brushing them along the faint, still-tangible scars around his lips. They were not quite visible, as Loki had long ago gotten into the habit of concealing them, but they could be felt. “I merely know what that is like.”

Swallowing tightly, Tony relaxed, not pulling his hand away when Loki let it go, tracing every single scar where needle and thread had been pulled through flesh. He exhaled a bit raggedly when the tension bled out of Loki’s long-limbed body over him, and he could feel them pressed together. “I guess you do.”

In reply, Loki merely kissed his palm, then leaned in and pressed a similar almost-chaste kiss to his lips.

Tony returned it, and missed the contact when they parted.

“Tell me of your dream.”

“A story for a story,” the inventor countered.

“Thor has not told mine already?”

“He said you had your mouth sown shut, and it was to do with a bet.”

The trickster snorted. “Of course he did.” Bitterness: Loki had it in droves.

“What really happened?”

Loki hummed. “Yours first, that the tale of mine may go toward chasing it away, for you.”

Tony smiled a little, wondering a bit, but said, “Okay,” and began to tell the story.


	12. Taken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt from hahnnahrhen on tumblr: "Taken"

That there was something to be said for having a possessive lover, at times––and that was something Tony Stark never expected to find himself thinking. It should have been terrifying, really.

A bit of terror kept things interesting, though. Especially with Loki in his bed.

The trickster god’s hands roamed freely, touching everywhere within reach as though trying to reclaim every inch of Tony’s skin. His kisses were fervent and full of heat, and every touch, even as he pinned the inventor beneath him on the sheets, silently screamed _more_ and _closer_.

Every fiber of Tony’s being ached with two warring desires: the first being the urge to say something snarky to break the tension, defuse some of the seriousness; the second was the urge to let himself drown in this, stop fighting, and pull more of Loki into himself, until he couldn’t find the lines keeping them separate any longer.

Loki pressed on hand over Tony’s cracked ribs a little too hard, making the inventor emit a pained cry against his mouth, breaking the kiss; although he didn’t pull away far: the trickster’s face still so close it was slightly out of focus. Then bone-deep cold settled under his skin.

“You will need your strength,” the god panted.

Tony gripped the trickster’s hips harder. “Will I now? No rest for me?”

“Not until I have you here––not until you can no longer form intelligible syllables that are anything other than my name, Tony.”

“Is this going to happen every time I get kidnapped?”  
Loki paused, however briefly, then bit down just a little harder where his teeth were at the inventor’s throat, making Tony groan not-quite-comfortably. “I don’t approve of thieves inclined to take that which is mine.”

“I told her I was taken, but it didn’t help,” Tony muttered.

At that, the trickster really did freeze, his body temperature even dipping briefly. “You what?”

Oh. Right. That mutual enmity thing was still... a thing. “I’m taken. By you. I thought.” He raised an eyebrow, let Loki hear a bit of the uncertainty in his tone.

Leaning in until their noses and foreheads brushed, Loki purred, “Do you think you can trap me with this?”

“I hope it’s mutual, because you’re the best I’ve ever had and not just in bed for fuck’s sake, Loki, but I’m not under any illusions that you’re the easily-committed-to-a-mortal type.”

“Oh.” A shiver ran down through Loki’s body. Tony could feel it, intimately, especially as Loki’s fingers––when exactly had they gotten lubricated? So unfair––pushed into him, slow and almost reverent. “So what would you want me to be to you, Tony Stark?”

“Taken.” Tony rolled his hips up, gasping as that all-too-talented hand set about hitting just the right place, dragging over it hard and slow. “If anyone asks, you’re taken.”

“Interesting, given your position.”

“You’re taken because you have me for the taking, and you know it,” Tony hissed out, spine arching a bit as Loki bit the side of his neck hard enough to mark again. “That’s––oh, fuck, don’t stop––that’s what I _want_ , Loki.” He swallowed tightly as Loki tugged his chin up with  his free hand, and met his gaze steadily.

“You have it,” Loki said simply, lightly. “You’re mine.”

“Ownership isn’t one way, here.”

“I should certainly hope not.”

Tony moaned again, and let the trickster pull him into another kiss, hot and almost reverent, with something a little frantic just around the edges. Then Loki’s hand was gone, replaced by something a bit more substantial, and the trickster was busy really _taking_ him, breathing hot against the inventor’s mouth before licking his way between those lips while pistoning his hips with less and less mercy.

Then it was all heat and pounding and pressure and friction and Tony was beyond taken. He was just _gone_ , except where he was touching the god of lies and mischief, keeping himself anchored.

“You’re so good, holy fuck, Loki, _please_ make me-” And then it broke.

“You’re as beautiful without your wits are you are with them,” Loki mused, breathing hard as his hips jerked in a less controlled manner. “I love robbing you of them, and that you let me.”

“Come for me,” Tony gasped. “Take.”

Loki made an inchoate sound, and didn’t have to be asked twice.

And so Tony took what was his. And so Tony was really, really taken with the idea of keeping this one, and this one keeping hold of him, especially like this: hot, close, and almost painfully intense. And if he let Loki keep some of the more important parts of himself, then well…

At least it was a mutual sort of taking.

 


	13. Frippery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt for wrecked-anon on Tumblr: "Frippery"
> 
> Because really, what a fun word.

As good as Loki and Thor might look in their full armor, even with their ridiculous helmets, Tony couldn’t help but think of most of it as simply––excessive. Frivolous, even. It was all just particularly impact-resistant finery. Especially the _capes_ for fuck’s sake. The inventor was still utterly mystified by how either of the two godlings managed to wear their capes without actually looking ridiculous.

So when Loki got a bit oddly enthused by the idea of Tony Stark wearing Asgardian formalwear, the inventor was more than a little unnerved.

“I’ll handle it,” the trickster had said.

And handle it he had.

Now came the moment of truth. Steeling himself, Tony turned around and looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror he’d been trying to ignore while he’d donned the––overly complicated, impractical, surely just insane––foreign clothing.

“Oh,” Tony said, in tones of sudden understanding.

The cloth was a bit darker than Iron Man’s more usual hotrod-red, and it clung. It clung _nicely_ , providing more support than expected, emphasizing his trim figure more than he might’ve expected. It was highlighted strategically, in places where he’d need the protection but which also benefitted from a bit of shininess: his shoulders, sternum and collarbones, along his ribs, the outsides of his thighs, and gauntlets at his forearms that looked suspiciously similar in style to his own more usual armor.

He didn’t get a cape. Nor did he get a long outer coat like Loki’s: just a vest that fell to mid-thigh, belted twice around his waist. The upper sections of his sleeves were plated like Thor’s in darker, brassy-gold, down to the gauntlets.

“What do you think, Mr. Stark?” Loki inquired.

How the trickster had gotten into the room, let alone come to stand close behind him, Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to think about. “I think you did good work.” The inventor eyed his reflection a bit more, then met Loki’s gaze in the mirror. “You gave it some thought.”

Loki shrugged it off, appearing just a little _too_ deliberately bored.

“You’d thought about me dressed up in armor and frippery from Asgard before this even came up, didn’t you?”

The trickster snorted. “Why, dare I ask, would I want to do that?”

Tony turned to face him properly them, stepped a bit closer. “I was gonna ask you, really. Seems an odd thing, even by your abnormally high standards for what qualifies as weird.”

“If I’m inclined to picture you in my mind’s eye, with strategic alterations to your clothing, rest assured, armor would feature very little.”

“Oh?”

“I’d prefer you divested of all garments and armor entirely. On your knees and shaking with arousal and need, for preference.”

Tony’s mouth went suddenly dry. “Oh.” Then he grinned. “That can be arranged.”

Loki’s eyebrows raised just slightly.

“Get me out of these first, though.”

“They do suit you,” the god purred.

“Not half so much as being naked does.”

“I look forward to finding out, right about-” Loki snapped his fingers. “-now.”


	14. Speechless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt for Cyrallia on Tumblr: "Speechless"

There are few things more unnerving than a half-dead figure of myth and legend, a literal _god of chaos_ , laying crumpled and bleeding in the aftermath of a battle.

More unnerving was how Loki had gotten to this point.

“Why?” Tony rasped.

The trickster said nothing, lingering in place where he was, clinging to a wall an bodily shielding the fallen inventor in the charred remains of his armor. It wasn’t clear whether he might have had enough blood-free breath to respond even if he had wanted to, but when Tony reached out to touch his face, he did lean into it a little.

When the others found them, Thor was the one who first recognized evidence of something worse than just a beating. “He is poisoned. The blades that struck him were very much _meant_ for him. No mage could easily recover from such as this.”

“Why were they all aimed at me then?” Tony almost asked, and then it hit him.

 _Oh. Oh holy fuck_.

It took all of his patience to wait for the coast to clear. Then he descended into the lab and settled into a chair near Loki’s hospital-grade cot. “They weren’t after me.”

Loki sighed, giving up his attempts to feign sleep, and his eyes fell open accordingly. “No. They were not.”

“You knew that.”

“They knew I would not wish to lose you. They had no reason to miss, even had they chosen a less effective target.”

“I know the sex is good but-”

“Don’t patronize me,” Loki snapped. “I’m aware of my place.”

“I... I don’t think you are.” Tony rubbed the back of his own neck. “I sure as shit wasn’t. I thought I’d gone off the deep end without you, on this front. I’d even started to get used to the idea that I’d sort of fallen in love with the impossible in a more literal sense than usual.”

Now the god of chaos and lies was staring at him, slightly wide-eyed. He opened his mouth, then snapped it closed, shaking his head. He tried again, but no words came out.

“Yeah, if you were wondering, that’s you I’m in love with. You’re pretty impossible, you’ve got to adm––” He was cut off by Loki pulling him down into a fierce kiss for several long, glorious moments. It was frantic and edged in outright panic, but hungry, and the trickster moaned into it sharply, as though it hurt.

And it was good. Oh, it was good.

“I love you,” Loki hissed, when they broke apart for a few moments. And what a welcome change from speechlessness that was, because Tony felt like his chest was going to explode with reckless, mad joy.

“Oh thank fuck it’s not just me.”


	15. Beguiling even Drunk in a Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three one-word prompts in one: "Drunk" and "in a tree" for flylittlekoala, and "beguiling" for widowofscars on Tumblr.

Upon waking, Tony reflected that he really shouldn’t be so used to being utterly unaware of where he was, or what’d happened in the hours before to get him there.

Tony couldn’t say for certain how, exactly, he’d wound up where he was, but he got the distinct feeling that a lot of alcohol and a few instances of bad decision-making processes had most likely been to blame with everything leading up to how he wound up drunk in a tree, with his armor all the way on the ground.

How he’d wound up there _with Loki_ was the real mystery.

The fact that Loki was dressed in nothing but black denim and one of Tony’s own T-shirts was also rather disconcerting. Add to that Loki being asleep curled against his chest, and Tony was about to panic, until he realized Loki had a large mostly-empty bottle of mead tucked under one arm.

Mostly-empty wasn’t all-empty, after all, and the mead, Tony was beginning to fuzzily recall now, as he gently pulled the bottle from Loki’s grasp and finished the last few small swallows, had gotten them into this mess. It was an already-potent Aesir brew based on an older recipe supposedly taken from Jotunnheim. Loki had the brilliant idea of adding a bit of the original mother-brew of Jotunnheim to it, and they had both gotten knock-out drunk fairly quickly as a result.

Thor had discovered them, at one point, while they were discussing their respective daddy issues in slurred tones of course. Tony distinctly recalled that as the moment he’d realized just how drunk Loki was, because the trickster hadn’t so much as batted an eye, but instead proffered the bottle and said, “Here, brother, try this before my better judgement returns, and perhaps we can get a bit of reconciliation done that we will neither of us clearly remember in the morning.”

Thor was now half-buried, insensate, under some of Tony’s armor and his own cape. Getting him to that point, Tony supposed, explained where the other four bottles must’ve gone.

It hadn’t been long after some very slurred, very angry and emotional brotherly bonding––which had required a referee, hence why Tony had been in his armor whilst so very wasted––that somehow, on a bet or a dare or something absurd, that Tony had gotten Loki to don Midgardian casual-wear. For some reason, this had led to Loki silently being opposed to footwear of any kind for the rest of the night.

Thinking back further, to Loki appearing in his lab, Tony suspected that he should’ve been more surprised or suspicious or something, but ever since the final conflict with Thanos, wherein Loki had not only provided Tony with some much needed intelligence and a few questionably moral resources, but had also shown up in the final hour and helped save their Avengerly asses alá deus ex machina, Tony had been on better terms with the god of mischief than most of the Avengers. The others, except Thor (whom Loki still avoided out of resentment) still didn’t like him, though, so the god and the inventor had casually kept their occasional meetings for drinks or intelligence-exchange fairly secretive.

That was all it’d been though, aside from snark and occasional flirting because Tony could only resist flirting with someone as gorgeous as Loki for so long before something important in his brain threatened to rupture at the injustice. Loki had flirted on occasion as well, but given the god’s reputation in myth and out of it, Tony suspected it was similarly casual.

Or he did until this waking-up-in-a-tree thing. He was sprawled at the juncture of three larger sections of tree trunk, well-supported, his legs able to stretch out and one arm resting on a smaller branch coming off the trunk. Loki’s face was nestled in the crook of his neck, the rest of the god curled up on his chest save for those indecently long legs, which straddled him a bit, letting his bare feet dangle over the ground far below. It was surreal for Tony, to say the least, even as he dropped the bottle, careful to make sure it hopefully wouldn’t hit Thor. After a few moments, he heard it land with a crack on a nearby bit of Thor-free forest floor and sighed in relief.

Loki shifted against him, muttering a little.

And yes, that mouth was against Tony’s neck, and Tony was still a bit drunk, and Loki looked unfairly beguiling in anything from absurd horned helmets and armor, to t-shirts and tight jeans, and this just was not going to go well if things kept up with Loki being warm and pliant and _all over him_. Best to wake him up, get Loki’s trademark look of incensed and murderous disapproval aimed at him, and hope it wasn’t as much of a turn on as it usually was. “Hey. Hey, why are we in a tree?”

With a huff––warm air puffed right against his neck, not fair––Loki grumbled and shifted a little, nuzzling at Tony’s neck. His arms uncurled a bit, and he settled his hands on either side of Tony’s hips as he seemed to realize they were balanced a bit more precariously than they might’ve been at, say, ground level. “Hmm?”

“You keep that up, I’m gonna request you follow through, and that’s just going to get awkward when you throw me out of this tree for getting a hard-on while you’re nuzzling my neck, Loki,” Tony groaned.

The trickster froze. “Tony?”

“You’re not still drunk too?”

“I think I am, actually. By the Norns, that concoction is potent.” He shifted a bit, one hand moving lower, grabbing Tony’s ass almost casually as he lifted his head a little and looked around them. “This is a tree.”

“I did mention.”

Loki shook his head. “If I were going to throw you out of this tree for having a hard-on, I would have done so already. As it is, I’m inclined to suck you off, but I do not trust my balance presently.”

Tony groaned quietly. “God, you are such a tease.”

“You like it.” And that... he sounded outright predatory now. And interested. _Really_ interested. As interested as the matching hard-on Tony felt as Loki shifted enough to press it against him.

The inventor’s eyes widened and his mouth may have watered a little, making him convulsively swallow. “Yeah. I’d like it even more if we could actually have some really hot not-quite-enemies-but-damn sex to go with it at some point.”

“Mmm. Maybe once we’re out of this tree. I could attempt teleportation...”

“If you don’t trust your balance enough to get off in the tree, I personally question how trustworthy your magic is for something like _teleporting our bodies and keeping them intact_.”

“It’s a simple enough spell, prepared beforehand, which I keep on-hand for such occasions as this.” Loki pulled something from his back pocket. “So. Your bedroom?”

Tony thought about it. He’d made far worse decisions in the past. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

They then vanished.

An hour or so later, Thor awoke when the Mark VII suit began to coalesce together of its own accord, and shot off back home. He stared after it for a long moment, still fuzzy, then sat up and looked around, finding the bottle responsible for this mess.

“Dammit, Loki.”


	16. A Matter of Claim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was for two prompts.
> 
> From an Anonymous commenter: "YOU THERE! Congratulations on the followers! Now, I request a frostiron prompt of delicious porny nature. Give me something with these three words as a prompt: Wood, strings, old MWHAHAHAHAH"
> 
> And from tiritirimatangi on Tumblr, the one-word prompt: "Defending"

Asgard continued to throw Tony off, every time he was there. It was the magic, really, and all the steps in industrialization that it had allowed the whole civilization to skip. There were places that were all gleaming metal and elegance, but they had torches on the wall, and one such massive chamber had an open roof plan simply because there was _a gigantic goddamn tree_ growing in the middle of it.

And that’s the major contrast, with Asgard. The place is ancient, but technologically advanced, and no matter how much sleek metal might be visible in public well-trodden places, there was still wood everywhere, twisting its way up through everything like the most stubborn tree growing up from between the cracks on the side of a rocky mountain.

Outside the palace, the metal seemed more like the creeper, always at the edges, or embedded so deep within that it seemed surprising when it finally became visible, as things opened up under further scrutiny: that had been the case with the tree Loki had been imprisoned in, after the incident with the Norn Stones, when Tony was shown how it had worked. That had been a long while ago, after Loki’s first escape.

They had learned myriad ways to NOT underestimate Loki.

And now it showed. He couldn’t escape, this time.

That wouldn’t be much of a problem for Asgard, if Loki hadn’t managed to do something fairly impressive between his escape from that tree a few years ago, his attempted takeover of the nine realms with the Norn stones, and the war with Thanos during which he briefly allied with the Avengers and incidentally saved their sorry asses, and today, when he was to be sentenced for his myriad crimes.

The sentence was part of why a certain mad inventor of Midgard was present in Asgard again, a guest of Thor the Thunderer, who did not wish for his brother to be executed, and didn’t plan to let that happen without a fight.

Tony Stark had something to get off his chest, before that sentence got carried out. A whole number of things, really.

And so he strolled into the chamber they kept Loki in, and murmurs went up through the small crowd of important court figures as well as Asgard’s finest warriors and mages. Thor lingered at the door, blocking the exit, as Tony strode through the crowd, which parted for him as though he might have some sort of contagious madness they wished to avoid, and came to a halt on the dais Loki was bound upon. He’d been warned ahead of time not to expect Odin this time, but this was his first time meeting the long-lost true first-born son of Asgard, returned from a far-flung world wherein Thor and Loki had lost him, after which so many had blamed Loki for his death: Baldr.

While Odin dreamed in the Odinsleep, Baldr stood in as king.

Funny, how Odin had never discussed killing Loki as an option, Tony thought, but Baldr was pretty eager to put the younger trickster’s life to an end.

Loki was bound heavily with chains heavily etched with intricate runes of binding. Instead of gagging him, his lips had been sewn shut for the second time in his life. He looked fairly murderous, his upper lip curling to show his bloodied teeth behind the strings when he looked at Baldr, but his primary focus now was on Stark, now standing at his left.

“Are you done?” Tony asked sharply.

Another susurration of muttering from the crowd, this time even more baffled.

Baldr, too, looked rather surprised and bemused. “I beg your pardon?”

“I was asking if you’re done, so I can take Loki home with me.”

There was a long, deathly cold silence after that. It lasted nearly a full minute.

Tony decided to break it, then: “Look, he’s not yours. He’s not your brother, he’s not Aesir, he’s been all but officially disowned by Asgard so your can all keep the peace politically with the other worlds in the nine realms, other pantheons and civilizations outside of it, and anyone else on the long list of incredibly powerful people he’s pissed off. Yeah, you caught him, but last time you did that, he got out of his cage according to his sentence: he made an Aesir cry for him. Yes, he did it in a rather sneaky way against the spirit of that sentence, but no such limits were placed upon the terms in that regard. So he’s already been tried and punished for his crimes against Asgard and the rest of the nine realms, all of them agreed to it, you all agreed to it. Now you’ve caught him, and he’s still guilty of plenty of crimes, yeah, but against Asgard? Not in the time after that last sentencing. He’s been busy pissing off other people, and on one notable occasion, saving the Avengers’ collective asses from Thanos, and helping us decimate the bastard, which probably saved the nine realms he’d previously attempted hostile takeover of, anyway!”

Baldr shook his head slowly. “He remains a traitor, a murderer of thousands.”

“So am I, big guy. You had your chance to punish him for that, though, and he got out early for clever thinking, which in my book is way better than ‘good behavior’ given that’s infinitely more lame. You can’t sentence him again just because your pride is still bruised from how easily he got free last time.”

“I can. Our courts are not those of Earth. Loki remains of Asgard, and he has continued to commit crimes against those who have been allies to us in the past-”

“Then let _them_ try to catch and sentence him,” Tony shot back. “You’re not going to kill this brilliant bastard as some sort of tribute to people he’s fucked with. Yes, he’s been all over the map committing thefts, aiding political coups in the ranks of the Kree just for fun and to see what chaos results from it, but that’s been of benefit to earth, lately. The Kree almost-revolution was, however accidentally, well-timed for us. It threw them into chaos just before they could send forces to earth to get rid of one Captain Mar-Vell, and set about paving the way for future conquest of earth by their happy little empire. So really, we’re fine with that.”

“Why do you defend him, Anthony Stark?” Baldr commanded.

“Because I’m in love with him, obviously, and you’d do well to remember exactly who _I_ am, especially since this is all _supposedly_ about politics between Asgard and other worlds. I’m the mortal who can start a war anywhere I damn well please, on earth or off of it, with five minutes’ effort and limited resources. I’m Tony Stark, and I keep Earth’s Mightiest Heroes under my roof, without any of them killing each other. No matter what governments get elected on my planet, no matter what changes happen there, whether S.H.I.E.L.D. is in chaos or not at any given time, I’m the one your civilization as a whole knows to go to when they need consult from earth, or help, or for earth to stand impressively beside them to scare off some other enemies. You rely on us, and on me, because you know without me, earth would be in real trouble, and Loki. Is. Mine. Is that _clear_?”

The room was tense and silent again for a long while. After half a minute of it, Tony pulled a small blade out of his breast pocket and handed it to Loki. The trickster god accepted it, and began to quietly cut the threads that had sewn his lips together. The soft sounds of cut strings seemed like the only sound in the room. Then Loki plucked the stitches free, wincing, but making no sound, as he dropped the bloodied things to the floor.

Baldr made no move to impede the process. He merely continued to try and stare Tony down, while the inventor simply waited for him to give up.

Loki muttered a spell in rasping tones, and his chains began to fall about him, clattering to the floor loudly. The god then rose to his feet, rubbing at his wrists with an expression of calm disdain. He then gravely intoned, “Tony, please marry me.”

The inventor did a quick double-take, losing his composure all at once for a few seconds as he sputtered, “Wait, what the––did you––what’d you just say?”

“I just asked you to marry me.” Loki held his gaze without hesitation, and with the beginnings of a smirk tugging at his lips. He pulled a cloth from his pocket and wiped away the quickly-drying blood from around his mouth. The wounds were already closed, and healing at his usual unfair pace.

Tony felt like the rug had been effectively pulled out from under him. He may have made a noise akin to a squeak. “Uhm.” He felt dizzy, and terrified, and panicked, and instinctively reached out for support, grabbing Loki’s upper arm. Then he finished processing it, took a deep breath, looking Loki in the eye steadily. “Yes. Yes, I think I’d actually like that.”

Baldr made a disturbed and outraged noise.

“Touch him and I will liquify your skeleton and leave you to die,” Loki growled at him. “He has made his case, you have nothing with which you can combat his claims legally, particularly now, and you well know it, Baldr.” He then smirked, wide and unkind. “Isn’t that right, father?”

“He is right, my son,” said a low, slightly harsh voice behind Baldr, who spun about to meet Odin’s disapproving stare. “To not seek petty revenge is a lesson your younger brothers, for the most part-” He shot Loki a mildly exasperated look, but the younger trickster only grinned in response. “-have already learned, Baldr.”

“Good to see you awake,” Tony said. “Nice timing. Family trait?”

Loki elbowed him discreetly.

Odin stepped forward, and pulled a golden apple from his sleeve, which he proffered to Tony casually. “Allow me to welcome you into the family, Anthony Stark.”

Tony spared Loki a glance and was impressed by just how shell-shocked the god of mischief appeared, and then reached out and took the apple. “Thank you.”

“I recommend you go now. I would have words with my eldest son.”

The crowd didn’t have to be told twice, and they carried Thor with them in their tidal wave of eagerness to get away. For his part, Loki wrapped an arm around Tony’s waist and teleported them out.

 

~~

 

Tony wasn’t altogether surprised that Loki transported them to the guest quarters he’d been provided as Thor’s guest. Loki having been weakened by the spells keeping him captive, the odds of his being able to get them back to Midgard immediately had looked slim.

Loki was staring at him steadily, lingering close, as Tony held up the apple between them. “So...”

“You’re aware of the––significance, yes?”

Tony nodded. “Yeah.” He smirked a little. “You want to be sure I’m serious.”

Loki cleared his throat. “Well, yes.”

Without dropping Loki’s gaze, Tony brought the apple to his mouth and took a large, fairly decisive bite. Then another, and another, finishing the fruit quicker than he’d expected, leaving only the stem behind: even the seeds had been pleasant. He let the stem drop from his fingers as Loki pulled him close for a rough kiss and pressed him back against the nearest wall in one sweeping movement.

Tony had gotten very efficient at removing Loki’s armor, and was halfway through that process when the trickster grew a little too impatient, and simply vanished the rest of their clothes. “Missed me?”

“By the nine, yes. And I want you,” Loki panted. “All of you.”

“You have me, Loki, as long as your ass is mine too,” Tony shot back, grinning widely at how Loki laughed soft and satisfied against his lips. He lifted one leg, wrapping it about Loki’s hip, and grinned when the trickster took that as a cue to lift him a bit up the wall, until his only real choice to keep himself supported was to lean back and lock both legs around Loki’s waist. Then they were kissing again, hands wandering, hungry for touch and further closeness.

Loki took his time, slow and teasing with his preparations, once he’d managed to summon a bottle of lubricant from Tony’s luggage. How he’d known where it was so automatically gave Tony insight into just how long they’d been doing this, just how well they knew each other, and _dear god I just agreed to a wedding, and I’m really serious, holy shit_. “You’re unfair, you’re unfair,” he gasped, as those thoughts ran through his head. “Fuck, too perfect, not even–– _Ah_.” Also on the list of features Loki possessed which were just unfair: those long, talented fingers were in the top 10. No other lover in all Tony’s experience could get him so close to coming just fingering him. Loki managed it _consistently_.

“I want you close, so that you’ll have to struggle not to come as soon as I’ve got my cock in you,” Loki purred.

“You’re––god, Loki, you’re doing a great job with that. Fuck!”

“How close are you?”

“T-too close, please I can’t, if you keep––” He certainly did _not_ whimper at the loss of Loki’s fingers inside him. Not at all. Much. Then Loki’s cock pressed into him, fast and deep and all at once and Tony’s body jerked, and he really did almost come all over himself right then. A near-miss. He did, however, make an extremely embarrassing and breathless noise. “Ffffuck me.”

“That’s the plan,” Loki murmured, and obliged: hard and merciless, no buildup to the punishing pace he set, just headlong into the sort of fucking that usually led to damaged walls and furniture back on earth.

Tony’s nails dragged hard down Loki’s back as he shuddered and struggled to keep pace, rolling his hips to meet each thrust even as his senses and coordination began to leave him entirely. No one else had ever been able to do this to him: drag him to new lows and highs all at once, and so beautifully and unpredictably. Loki was all pleasure and pain and chaos and brilliance.

And it wasn’t long before Tony fell apart for him, coming so hard his vision whited out and he was a shuddering mess trapped between the trickster god, who soon followed him over the edge, and the wall.

After a minute or so wherein they both caught their breaths, Tony said, “I say we elope on another world or something. The press can merrily go fuck themselves.”

Loki chuckled and kissed at his neck. “I like this plan.”


	17. Taste the Rainbow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to an anonymous little Tumblr prompt: "Taste the rainbow."

Leave it to the god of mischief to somehow take a night of drunken manly camaraderie (though you’d never catch him calling it that in front of Natasha) into something decidedly more awkward.

Somehow, he had persuaded all but Steve to approve of the idea of Skittles body-shots, which was about the most absurd thing Tony had ever heard. It seemed, however, that using something a bit less messy and inherently––well, requiring more licking––than alcoholic liquids had won over the rest of the Avengers.

Even Bruce, who was supposed to be their back-up conscience when Steve could no longer persuade them on his own.

It helped that they were all impressively drunk, thanks to their usual convivial post-saving-the-world-again drinking party had benefited from contributions of Asgardian mead from the trickster and their resident thunder god. And given just how ferociously Loki had fought with them against Thanos in that recent battle, protecting a downed Thor halfway through with a protectiveness that even a mother bear would’ve been impressed by (he’d protected an injured Clint too, but most of them had concluded that was due to Clint keeping close to Thor and applying some of his rudimentary medical knowledge whilst there, giving him some value to the bloodlust-overtaken god of lies at the time) the Avengers were feeling unusually well-disposed toward him. They had called even called an official truce with him that he’d sworn on in blood, early into that battle before it really heated up; although it would last only until two hours after dawn. First there had been drinking, then poker, then Loki had started quietly baiting Natasha and Tony both, and the options for poker became: forfeit an article of clothing, and if you’ve got the lowest hand also submit to a body-shot.

Thor and Steve had retreated not long after: Thor because he hadn’t yet mastered poker sufficiently to withstand his brother’s cheating and knew it, Steve because he wasn’t going to take part in their (as he’d blushed a bit like a schoolgirl) depraved madness. That had made Tony smile evilly, until he realized Loki was doing the same; then he stopped. He was already uncomfortably aware of just how much he and the trickster had in common: no need to add still more to the list.

Really, given this was the god of lies and mischief, they should’ve known better than to let him pull something like this.

All of these thoughts evaporated from Tony’s mind at the sight of Loki Lie-smith pushing up Black Widow’s shirt, his lips pulled back in an aggressive smile, as he removed a series of six colorful candies from the skin of her abdomen with delicate applications of teeth––just teeth, barely scraping.

It was the sort of image that, as a pervert who’d had vivid erotic dreams about both parties involved at one point or another since he’d met either of them, Tony Stark did not need in his life. He glanced at Clint, who looked a bit uncomfortable, torn between something like anger and something a bit like eagerness. It didn’t surprise Tony that Clint managed to win the next hand and claim the same forfeit, though he’d made sure to aim a little higher. Natasha rolled her eyes a little, as though it were an occurrence as normal as a foul joke, when Clint had to nuzzle at her cleavage to get the last one.

Hawkeye then returned to his seat with a perfectly calm expression that lasted until Loki won the next round, trumping them all quite thoroughly. Clint had the lowest hand.

“No,” Clint said flatly.

Loki grinned at him still wider. “Whyever not, little bird?”

The archer’s glare intensified. “I really don’t like you, that’s why.”

“You fold, then?” the trickster prompted, sounding disappointed.

“Yeah. Fine, I fold. I’m out. Do I get my pants back?” He didn’t bother asking for his shirt from Loki. Natasha handed him his jeans, though, which he tugged back on over his boxers before wandering off to sulk with Captain America. Or in the rafters. Though he was a bit tipsy for the rafters, in Tony’s opinion.

“You’re second-lowest hand, Tony,” Bruce pointed out, amused.

Tony, who had so far lost tie, watch, dress shirt, shoes, and with this last round also his belt, sat in jeans and a wife-beater, feeling a prickle of something like precognition. He suddenly knew this was a very bad idea, but he wasn’t about to back down. “Alright then.” He stood up and sprawled on the nearby couch they’d been using for these so-called body-shots.

“Lift your shirt, then,” Loki instructed as he stood, and accepted several candies into his palm from Natasha.

Tony folded his arms behind his head. “How about you do it for me, princess?”

The trickster’s smirk was less than reassuring. It did things to the inventor that he hoped weren’t at all apparent, especially as Loki stalked toward him––and it was stalking, the way he moved, just like when their very first stand-off before he’d tried to apply the scepter to Tony’s heart only for unexpected mechanisms to interfere––while still wearing that smirk. He waved a hand, and Tony’s shirt vanished altogether, reappearing over the back of his chair.

“Hey!”

“Just getting it out of my way, as per your request,” Loki sing-songed, then applied candies. There were seven, and they scattered across Tony’s abdomen two near his navel, three more across his six-pack, and the remainder just an inch below the arc reactor. Loki rested hand on the back of the couch for balance, and leaned down.

He used––not just his teeth.  _Oh god._

Starting high, his breath cool, Loki let his tongue dart out, sweeping up two at once, then the third. His lips didn’t break contact with Tony’s skin, their touch light and teasing as his breath as he moved further down, snapping up the other skittles with unnecessarily long sweeps, pausing slightly to glance up at meet Tony’s gaze before snatching up the last two with a deft, exaggerated swirling motion that ended with a scrape of teeth that made Tony’s breath catch for a moment.

Unable to look away from those glittering green eyes, Tony wondered briefly if they actually had an intoxicated god on their hands. Surely, that was the only way this made sense: for Loki to be more drunk than he’d so far let on. Then the trickster smirked wide and lascivious, his lower lip still on Tony’s skin.

“Do try to win the next round, Tony,” he said, just a little too quietly for the others to hear. Then he pulled away and nonchalantly returned to his seat.

Natasha’s eyebrows were raised very high indeed, and Bruce seemed to be blushing a bit, and possibly reconsidering further participation in the game with them. That just made Tony grin shamelessly, as the unease of other people always did, before he stood up and strolled back over to his chair to pull his black muscle-shirt back on. Then he sat down. “I’ll cut.”

He won the next round.

Loki’s hand was lowest.

Somehow, Tony was still a little surprised by that.

“That’s the first really bad hand you’ve gotten all night,” Bruce mused.

Natasha muttered something under her breath in Russian as the trickster stood up and began unbuttoning his shirt for sacrifice. Prior to that, he’d lost suit jacket, scarf, belt and boots at once at Clint’s insistence, and accessories consisting of a heavy-looking gold watch and necklace. Tony caught Loki’s shirt when it was tossed his way, along with Natasha’s tights and garters, and Bruce’s undershirt.

“Now lie back and think of Asgard over there,” Tony said, with a gesture.

Loki arched an eyebrow. “This is a pop-culture reference, I take it?”

“Historical this time, but yeah.”

Then Tony found himself dropping eight colorful candies onto the pale chest of the god of mischief and wondered just when things had taken such an odd turn. Loki mirrored the inventor’s previous carefree pose, arms folded behind his head, cushioning them, as Tony lowered his head and decided, with his usual impulsivity, to show the god how it was done.

Loki watched, breathing slow and even, though his pupils may have visibly dilated, as Tony’s mouth started low, where one green skittle had landed on a bit of visible hipbone: a quick swirl of tongue, concealed from the others’ view by lips and lightly-scraping teeth. Then a breath, and he ignored the one in Loki’s navel to instead move up, and catch three more in a row, in one smooth motion of mostly-teeth. The next three were given more individualized treatment: a nip, a lick, and another scrap of teeth. Then to the last, and lowest, which Tony tongued quickly, then settled his lips over and sucked at flesh and candy alike, glancing up to see Loki’s adam’s apple bob slightly and those green eyes darken further. In fact, there was really no mistaking the sort of look the trickster gave him then, just when a crash (Clint falling after a failed attempt to make it into the rafters) distracted the rest of the room.

Tony supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, really, that knowing a god wanted him would be such an intense turn-on.

“Clint, are you okay?” That would be Steve. Thor’s booming voice soon followed. Apparently, they had been drawn back in by the noise. A quick glance showed Natasha and Bruce on their way to join them, backs to the couch of skittles-related sin.

“JARVIS?” Loki asked calmly, a bit lower than Clint’s cursing so the others wouldn’t hear. “How injured is the archer?”

“Not very, Mr. Lie-smith. Bruised, at most. He did not land on anything delicate.”

Tony smirked a little as the trickster looked at him again. “We wouldn’t be missed, then. Not in any way they can complain about, if we decided to wander off.”

Loki sat up, leaning into Tony’s space. “If you have mettle enough, without your suit, to take on a god, then perhaps I might find myself in a mood to wander.”

“And in a mood for what else?”

“I’d like to fuck you.”

Tony licked his lips, still tasting sugar and skittles: mostly cherry and lime. “Persuade me to let you.”

“My pleasure.”

“JARVIS? If anyone asks, we’re doing science in my lab. Also lock them out of my lab, while you’re at it.”

“Of course, sir.”

Then Loki snapped his fingers and they both quietly vanished from the living room, to reappear upstairs in the bedroom of Tony’s penthouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skittles make me think of skittles body-shots, which is a fond memory from high school. Long story. Also, this fill is actually 2months old, but I somehow forgot to post it here until a charming anonymous commenter reminded me.


	18. Frostiron Month - Prompt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Character traits
> 
> " _What was there to do, but laugh? Crying sure as hell wouldn't help anyone, but laughter... laughter could preserve what was left of his sanity. Laughter, malice, pride, and stubborn will: these were the core of his self, deep down enough that he could rely on them even when heart and virtue failed him._ "
> 
> Sort of future-AU at the end, which may sort of attribute a lot of Marvel 616 canon to Tony's character, but not enough that you actually have to be familiar with any of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not actually sure why the first part is present tense and all the rest of actual narrative isn't, but I just sort of decided to roll with it, sorry.

Hitting rock bottom has a tendency to affect everyone differently.

Any of those who might try to simplify the world by suggesting that there are only two types of people––those who have hit rock bottom, and those who haven't––are missing the point. Rock bottom is far from a universal experience; for although living lives without hitting such a dark place, without ever falling so far, may easily seem all the same to the fallen themselves (a place of all safe and secure things: all blandness, all light, all simplicity and ignorance) there is still too much diversity amongst the fallen for them want to be lumped _altogether_ into a single group, either.

For those who have never hit rock bottom––have never been so low that they know what it feels like to never want to move again, to bleed out and let it end, rather than suffer the climb back up into a world of light––for them, there is no comparison to be made, and any attempts to empathize will be that crucial bit incomplete. It is one thing to imagine yourself in the shoes of a broken hero; it is another thing entirely different to think oneself a hero and then to be broken.

Looking at the Avengers: every single one of them has been that low, or close.

Steve was brought that low by his own body failing him for about the first two decades of his life, and he's never forgotten. He also still dragged himself back up every time, with help from friends with good hearts. He did not struggle alone; even when he had nothing, he had Bucky Barnes to track him down and drag him back home. When he lost Bucky, he was alone, and since then he has felt alone, and that has been a new type of low for him, but he has learned from it graciously.

The others see him as infinitely more pure of heart and intention than they themselves could ever muster.

All save Thor, who was broken the least of all of them, and they do know it. While at times his vast age and the sagacity it sometimes brings him, the vast patience and breadth of battle experiences he’s had––all of these things make him wiser than most men. He has been weakened, and broken, and believed himself lost, but he was still saved, rather than being forced to save himself, and there is a crucial difference in that; he sacrificed himself, rather than save himself, and was lifted from rock bottom, rather than having to climb even with no strength left. Overall, the others think of him as having a good heart on par with Steve's, but additional tact-related tone-deafness, as a result.

Bruce, very clearly, struggled with his personal abyss every day, everywhere. When his eyes flickered green, the others could see exactly what dark heart he was staring into all the time, whenever his thoughts drifted from the present, but when he was not dwelling or low, his passion for justice and determination to do good at his own expense, made him a better man than most; however ill-fitting he knew such a title was, for he knew what lay in his own heart all too well. He is perpetually in awe of how much his fellow Avengers trust him, and believe in him, and care for him as their friend and confidant. He keeps himself steady, and whether he knows it or not, he keeps his friends steady too, teaching them through his commentary on life and occasional reluctantly-offered advice, helping keep them all sane. This means more to the other Avengers than he may ever realize.

The other three had all looked into their own personal abysses when they fell their farthest, and again in every other fall they've suffered since. In all those times, they do face it: the darkest parts of their own hearts, and souls.

Clint stared into his own flaws and the smallness of his own human existence, muttered, "fuck that, I'm gonna kick everyone's ass anyway" and to this day he strives to achieve that goal as much as possible, knowing well his own weaknesses and just deciding, every time, not to care about them, or allow them any more of his thoughts or time than it takes to acknowledge their existence, protect the most vital ones long enough to preserve that continued existence, and above all to keep fighting. That is why, on occasion is genuine anger is provoked, Hawkeye’s smile tends to have a slight edge to it, sharp as some of his arrow-heads, and equally unkind. Sometimes even poisonous.

Over time, through numerous experiences of her own collected over the years, Natasha has stared into a very great abyss indeed, for it was not only her own, but all the world's. She stared into an abyss made up of all in the universe that ever slips away into the dark, and into hopelessness, and into the ends of all things. She kept staring, with neither mirth nor tears, only her own terrible knowledge and understanding, repeatedly. Eventually, it's presumed that the abyss blinked first and she moved on from there. There have been very few people like her on earth; although some amongst the gods (Thor mentions their names, now and then--those that Natasha reminds him of: Hela, Sif, and Hecate) that experienced precisely the same.

The last, Tony Stark, is a very different case. He stared into the same sort of abyss Natasha did, but also riddled more with selfish and greedy aims concerning his own mortality, his own legacy, and of the other marks left by the Stark name on human history. Rather than being forced to stare into it, he willingly chose to focus upon it: _anything_ to take his mind off the horrible pain in his chest from cracked and sawed bits of bone and muscle tissues all trying to heal around foreign metal. Tony Stark stared into the abyss at the other end of his own existence, and its history, and human history as a whole still further.

He stared into it, and he laughed. He laughed, and laughed, and in truth is still laughing, if you look very closely.

 

~~

 

Deep down, in his _heart_ (wherein there was enough dark to merit requiring the world’s most expensive night-light to survive it) Tony Stark was laughing even when the alien invasion of New York City by the Chitauri was nigh, and there was a trickster god awaiting him on the balcony of his penthouse: the provocative little shit.

Tony Stark, deep down, was still laughing right up until he looked the god of lies in the eye close enough, while threatening him.

Loki Lie-smith had, by that point in his life, hit rock bottom so very many times that he practically had a summer home there, and there was something about the twist of his smile, combined with the coldness in his eyes and the dramatic flair in the way that he chose his words despite that apparent ( _too confident, too amused, like I missed a joke, not a threat, what am I missing?_ ) apathy, that got the mad inventor's attention.

Then he stepped a little closer, and saw a little more, and it clicked in a familiar fashion. They were doing the same thing: Tony feigning the confidence to threaten him, while in actuality he was vulnerable until he had a bit more time for the new suit to prep; Loki pretending he was confident he would win the war, _but he finds it_ funny _that I keep arguing that he won’t win a war or a throne_.

The war coming wasn’t false, Tony could see, by how much less attention Loki paid to how he spoke of it: brief and less artful, less of interest to him, because it was a known quantity and already inevitable.

Then he got it, all at once.

 _You're not here to win_ , Tony didn't say, but he knew, then.

And so too, did Loki. He did not want the earth, knew that he could not have it. He only wanted the chaos, the war, and to be returned home to face Odin's fury... with the same laughter with which he still regarded the abyss.

 

Tony dismissed that thought, once the fighting started. He had other things to focus on: like making absolutely certain the inept invasion attempt really _did_ fail, with as few casualties as possible.

Then he took a missile through the portal and as soon as he was on the other side...

Oh, did he suddenly get it.

He had only stared into the abyss metaphorically, before that, but this...

This was clearly the sort of thing Loki had seen an awful lot of. This was the place Loki was escaping. This armada, the omnipresent scratching susurrations and chittering calls of the Chitauri, and something worse lurking behind them that Tony caught only a glimpse of, when the blast first went off, before it all went dark for him, and he fell back, and back, and down, and down, through the portal again, back to earth, caught in the arms of a giant green rage monster.

So what did Tony do, when he first woke up after that?

He swore, and he cracked jokes, because really...

What was there to do, but laugh? Crying sure as hell wouldn't help anyone, but laughter... laughter could preserve what was left of his sanity. Laughter, malice, pride, and stubborn will: these were the core of his self, deep down enough that he could rely on them even when heart and virtue failed him.

So then, when Loki, having only halfway dragged himself from the crater that the Hulk had left him in, spine only barely healed enough that he could move his limbs again, merely huffed resignation at the sight of the Avengers, and requested, "If it's all the same to you," with a hint of a sigh and then a glance up at them with his head tipped down a little in concession, "I'll have that drink now?"

What could Tony Stark do, but smile, and spend the next ten minutes arguing with the other Avengers, who didn't want to let him give the god of mischief anything from the bar.

They didn't let him, in the end, but neither trickster nor mad inventor, forgot.

 

~~

 

The place was a furnace.

It was also a holding cell.

Tony Stark had metal around his heart keeping him alive again. More shrapnel... among other intrusions. He was a long way from earth, and it had been a few years, at least, since he’d last called been called an Avenger.

He might have fucked up and been selfish for a long while.

Things might have gone rolling through a dozen or more hells, in always-insufficiently-insulated hand-baskets, and Tony had needed... distance.

A _lot_ of distance.

Apparently, slipping away from the so-called _Guardians of the Galaxy_ on his own in an unfamiliar space-port he had only outdated blueprints for most of? Probably too far, but he thought he’d seen someone.

A ghost, probably. He’d collected too many more of those.

Just a ghost with laughing green eyes.

Tony had expected to be in the cell for much longer. He hadn’t even started to hallucinate yet, and the water he was given on his way to his next bit of caged-existence was sufficient to help out his dry mouth, though his lips were unpleasantly chapped. He had mild burns, but they healed quickly, thanks in some part to a few intrusive parts he’d had to acquire in order to survive the past two weeks. It was tech from Titan, he knew, and installing it had made Tony understand some of the many reasons Gamora had to resent Thanos, particularly any which required implantation of biomechanical enhancements deep enough under skin and muscle that they only showed up clearly on x-rays. Needing such enhancements to keep his own organs functional had been earned Tony several new nightmares, and he was thoroughly regretting most of his life choices until he was led through three entirely unfamiliar doors and into what seemed to be a lobby, without much in the way of escape-prevention in sight.

“What’s going on, exactly?” Tony asked.

“You’ve been sold,” said a skinny, highly reptilian creature behind what seemed to be an Information desk.

“Is this... is this prison really connected directly to a brothel?” Tony asked, mildly scandalized, but also a bit intrigued. It was certainly a unique business model in his experience, given how relatively non-creepy this particular lobby was.

“No, Mr. Stark,” said the reptile. “This is the courthouse.”

The inventor was momentarily abashed. “Yeah, well, this little entryway here from prison, to freedom, or whatever? Looks like a converted hotel.”

“Oh, it is.”

“Uhm...”

“It did used to be a brothel far enough back in its history, as is the case with many hotels of its sort in this quadrant, Mr. Stark. You won’t insult the local culture, so much as yourself, for how instantly familiar you are with hotels that are also brothels around here,” the reptile chided.

“I’m Tony Stark,” he said. “And I’ve recently been arrested. You ask me how many people are surprised that I’m also familiar with brothels in the area. Can I ask what your name and pronouns are, by the way?”

“You may call me Tess, and use feminine pronouns. If you suggest I look like a lizard, I may bite off one of your extremities, because I’m actually from a serpent clan, and while I’m not poisonous, you still don’t want to test me before you’re out of those specialized cuffs,” she said matter-of-factly.

Tony inclined his head respectfully. “Nice to meet you, Tess. Why exactly am I here, why have the brutes entrusted to protect innocent people from me gone, and also why _am_ I still in these cuffs?”

“You’re here because the exorbitant amount of money required for your bail, all local property damage, all fines necessary to get every other one of your crimes exonerated, and mysteriously all suits against you seem to have been dropped,” she said sweetly. “However, that left us with nowhere to put you legally, given the illegal technology implants in your body are not permitted legally to leave the prison grounds, because they are not permitted on any mode of transport, or even to be carried about your person whilst in this port at all. This causes us an unusual dilemma, which usually is fixed by a long wait time, until such time as instant transport from this location to another space-port might be acquired. In your case... someone volunteered to provide. He hasn’t arrived yet, which is why you’re still in those cuffs. He’s the only one in port legally allowed to remove them.”

After a few moments of furious blinking, Tony asked, “Who the fuck did all that and then volunteered what now?”

“Consider it an investment, in return for collecting on a very old debt,” another voice said, low and male, with a slightly dry edge, as though it were still recovering from long disuse.

The inventor froze in place, because he knew that voice. It had been years, but he knew that voice, same as he’d known it when he heard it scream in rage over a month ago on the other end of the port. He’d seen someone familiar, with bright green eyes glowing until some brutes managed to reapply some sort of metallic muzzle, at which point their victim appeared to lose most of his strength and collapse under their combined weight. Tony had given chase on impulse, and been chasing pretty consistently every week since then, until he’d been caught three days ago and shuffled through a few different sections of the local prison system.

“Come, Tony Stark,” Loki said. “Let’s have that drink now.”

“I’ve been dry for almost two years, you know,” Tony said, turning to meet the god’s gaze and feeling a strange prickle of self-consciousness, as those too-familiar green eyes took him in from head to toe and slowly back up again. It wouldn’t have been quite so uncomfortable if the trickster’s expression hadn’t remained an utterly unreadable blank. He looked even more masked, and a bit more (dangerously) quiet and muted and innocuous in his demeanor. It was pure façade, but it said a lot about what Loki must have been up to lately, to still be wearing that particular mask collection even here, even now. It was no less Loki himself than any other of his collections, so far as Tony could tell, and he hoped it would stay that way. The way Loki lied in so many ways, while remaining somehow sincerely himself throughout, just different shades of the same enigma, was one of his favorite things about this trickster.

Taking a deep breath, the inventor stepped closer, lifting his cuffs a just a little in pretense, and added, “Last I checked, you’d been dead longer than that.”

“And yet,” Loki murmured, “You chased me.”

Tony swallowed tightly at that. He was really hoping that might have slipped the trickster’s notice.

“Why?” Long fingers hooked the chain between the inventor’s cuffs and tugged him closer by it, just half a step.

Staring up into the mixture of bleakness and mischief and madness in Loki’s eyes, Tony started to smile despite himself. “You’d died how many times before that, to be fair? I mean, really, after number four, I don’t know how many people can even take the announcement seriously. I know Thor stopped after the second time mostly as a sort of sad coping mechanism-”

“ _Tony_.”

The inventor sucked in a breath slowly, and let it out. “I’m not done figuring you out, and figured if I did get you out, you might stick around longer than a few battles, or a chat while we’re both immobilized by a common enemy right up until help arrived and you teleported out of dodge basically as a way of giving us the finger by not helping us out too, and I could actually buy you the drink I owe you so you’ll either stop using it to flirt with me, or you’ll actually do more than flirt, for fuck’s sake, Loki. Okay?” He saw only a twitch at one corner of the trickster’s mouth and a slight tightening of his jaw before he had to look away, not entirely willing to see potential anger there. “I swear my intent wasn’t ‘heroic’, so you can stop sounding scandalized and-”

Words stopped at precisely the moment Tony experienced first-hand several of the reasons people had considered “Silver-tongue” to be a very apt nickname for Loki Lie-smith. The inventor couldn’t find it within him to protest, and emitted a slightly surprised groan, very quiet in the back of his throat, as Loki’s tongue claimed his mouth and he felt long fingers at his neck and jaw.

“You’re an idiot, Stark.”

“At the moment, I’m going to have to blame the effects of your mouth.”

“Even before that,” the trickster sounded amused.

Tony’s eyes fell open. He’d seen Loki laugh in a lot of situations, but this was the first time there was something close to genuine warmth and affection in the god’s expression at the time. “Look, if you wanted in my pants earlier, it’s not like you didn’t have plenty of opportunity. Can’t you Apparate anywhere almost anytime?”

“I can leave these cuffs on as long as I like, you know.”

“But you can’t leave with them,” Tess reminded.

Both the inventor and Loki jumped slightly, having forgotten she was there.

She grinned at them with an array of extremely frightening teeth. “You’re both wasting my time. Mr. Lie-smith, if you could sign where marked on these documents, I’d be much obliged.” She pushed a clipboard towards them both.

The trickster rolled his eyes and dragged Tony closer to the desk by the chain between his cuffs, then proceeded to ignore him for a while as he read over the documents twice very shrewdly before signing them. If he managed to alter anything, the inventor hadn’t managed to catch it. “Is this sufficient?” he inquired, handing over the clipboard, once finished.

Tess examined it, flicking the pages up between her manicured claws. Wordlessly, she handed him a key with her long tail, without looking up.

Loki accepted it, and applied it to Tony’s cuffs.

The inventor rubbed at his wrists while Tess took the cuffs next and dropped them down some sort of chute behind her desk. “You’re both free to go, so long as you do so by instant teleportation,” she concluded. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

The two men exchanged glances and took a few steps back from the desk before turning to look at one another again.

“Where to?” Tony inquired.

“I was going to ask you that question,” Loki mused.

“... Did you actually want me to make you a drink first, or is somewhere with a wall you can pin me up against for awhile, without interruption, an acceptable alternative?”

“I know of several such places, but I live in none of them for long, for a number of reasons,” Loki said quietly. “None of them are very close by any longer, for a lot of reasons, most of which you’ve been assassinating the hired hunters of for a few weeks now, so I do think we have matters to discuss, whether over drinks or otherwise, before I enjoy the rest of your person. Any recommendations?”

“... You know the lunatics, the ah, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’?”

“I’m aware of them.”

“I’ve been...”

“I know.” Something odd glittered in the trickster’s stare, then.

Tony caught it. “You... were you _looking_ for _me_?”

Loki ran a hand over the back of his neck, grimacing a little. “Possibly following a few rumors. I’m surprised you honestly didn’t notice the thugs you’ve been chasing around this port are from the same mercenary providers as those the Guardians usually wind up fighting against lately.”

“I did, but I happen to know they’ve got a monopoly in this port,” Tony said flatly. “As far as hints go, come on, I get a pass, there.”

“Perhaps.”

“Why were you looking for me?”

“For much the same reason you chased me, Mr. Stark.”

The inventor hesitated, tilting his head a bit to one side. “Really.”

“I’ve caught up on your recent history. I...” He cleared his throat quietly. “We should talk, you and I, I think. As well as fuck thoroughly over various surfaces, furnished or otherwise.”

“Okay,” Tony said, starting to grin. “You hungry?”

“Starving, actually.”

“Let’s have dinner, then. How far can you teleport?”

Loki gave him a rough estimate of his range, by listing a few nearby other space ports, and two satellite stations over inhabited worlds.

“That last one!”

“The Elvish restaurant?”

“Yes! You know them?”

“The owner is the son of an old friend of mine, actually.”

“So he’s going to try to shoot you?”

“Only at first.”

Tony nodded. “Dinner and a show. Sounds perfect, to me; although I could use a bit of magic in the wardrobe department.”

Loki waved a hand dismissively, and muttered a couple of spells.

“... I recognize this suit.”

“It was the only Westwood it seemed you’d ever allow on your body for some time, as I recall, yes,” Loki said. “Sufficient?”

“Did you just magically shave me too?”

“Is that a complaint?”

Tony ran his hand over his freshly-cleaned-and-trimmed chin. His beard was immaculate, and he was much more comfortable than before the spell-work’s effects. “Not really, no.”

“I didn’t think so.” The trickster proffered a hand and smirked.

Taking hold of it, the inventor couldn’t help but grin back, stifling the urge to laugh for no reason other than that he felt happy and thrilled enough to do so, but he kept it quiet, save for how it shone in his eyes, and reflected too in Loki’s. “Ready when you are, Loki dear.”

“For you, always,” the god murmured, eyes glittering still brighter at the look of surprise and desire both that shone on Tony’s face just before they teleported away.

Tess made an unimpressed noise. “Crazy mammalian bipeds. Ugh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trait chosen: "that sort of madness that comes from staring into the abyss and laughing"


	19. Feeling Exposed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark would never get used to magic being a part of his sex life.
> 
> Loki finds a way to get away with public sex guaranteed to allow neither of them to get caught, so long as he maintains his spells. He just doesn’t tell Tony about it first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frostiron Month, Prompt 3: Sex With A Twist

Tony Stark would never get used to magic being a part of his sex life.

One minute, he’s minding his and Loki’s own business, bent over one of the armchairs in the corner of the movie room while everyone else was out of the Tower, his increasingly dear trickster god making him come so hard he knew he had screamed, but somehow he didn’t even hear it, until his voice cracked and trailed off from pleasure into dismay as the god kept fucking him.

The next minute, all of the rest of the Avengers (sans Thor, thankfully) are strolling in like everything was perfectly normal, opening a couple of bags of popcorn and lamenting that the fireworks show they had been planning to watch had been rained out. There were jokes made about calling the Thunderer to come help out with the weather, but he was busy in Asgard.

Tony was busy trying not to implode with embarrassment and confusion and horror the likes of which he hadn’t actually thought his shameless self still capable of. He might have emitted a squeak of acute terror, then gasped in acute discomfort and still greater humiliation as Loki’s fingers trailed down his sides and that sinful voice whispered just a hint of magic against the side of his neck, and Tony felt himself grow hard again more instantly than he had ever even managed in his teenage years.

“ _Oh_ f-fuck _Loki_ ,” Tony moaned before he could stop himself, because the burn of it––the pain, his entire body flush with acute shame and the surreality of the situation made it all feel strangely dream-like. Then panic gripped his throat and he stared at the others, but they... were settling on the couches, avoiding the chair Tony had already come all over once so far seemingly without noticing they were doing it.

They weren’t noticing anything. Not even their noises.

“F-fuck you complete fucking asshole,” Tony snarled, with a mixture that was sixty percent genuine rage, and twenty percent each of euphoric relief and desperation.

“I’m not quite done fucking yours,” Loki purred in his ear. “Look at them all, so blissfully unaware of you, as you make such an exquisite mess of yourself at my mercy.”

“Sh-shut up.”

“Oh, you like this, don’t you?” teased the god, beginning to thrust again, slow and deep, making certain the mortal under him felt every inch slide out, and then the low but audible smack of sharp hipbones against his ass as the god shoved back in mercilessly and with enough force to jar Tony’s entire body, almost knocking the air out of him, over and over. The chair creaked.

Tony couldn’t help how his heart raced all the faster. There were two master assassins and a super-soldier in the room. In Tony’s mind, all of them had senses more like hunting hounds than regular humans; thinking of them as such was the only way he could keep self-conscious enough to keep secrets from them and thus have any hope for privacy ever again. For all of them to be sitting and lounging around eating popcorn while the creaking of the chair grew louder and then became an outright series of wooden thunks that surely meant Loki had broken something in the armchair’s structure itself––all of Tony’s senses told him he was caught, that they were actually watching him, and no matter how he tried to keep quiet, he felt exposed and, to be frank, sluttier than he’d ever felt in his entire life, and as Anthony _goddamn_ Stark that was saying something.

“You feel almost feverish, my love,” Loki murmured, and bit at his shoulder sharply. “Do you need to cool down?”

_Oh sweet Galileo on a stick._

The day Loki had realized that temperature play was like Tony Stark kryptonite would go down in history as the fastest reversal in history from self-loathing to sudden-new-fetish, on Loki’s part. Something about how the inventor had come from just a slightly chilly handjob and proceeded to deep-throat Loki until the god came more than once, because there turned out to be an interesting flavor differential...

And now he was lit up with embarrassment as he’d never been in his life, his skin all hot and sensitive an pink all over, and Loki wanted to-

_Oh yes_ **_that!_ **

Blue hands trailed suddenly down his chest, just hands and wrists as Loki summoned enough ice to make the inventor shudder and arch back into his thrusts and keen high and long as he came again, but couldn’t come down from it. It was only then he looked down and saw a bit more additional magic than usual.

“You seriously magicked up the cock-ring?” Tony whispered, incredulous just for a moment before another helpless moan was pulled from him. Loki had used this trick on him before; he would come as many times as the god wanted him to, but wouldn’t ejaculate, or be any less horny and needy, until the ring came off. He sucked in a breath as cold fingers stroked his cock slowly––so cold it should’ve hurt, but with that ring in place his erection sure as hell wasn’t shrinking away from it, so it felt–– _oh_ it felt like his entire body trembled and shivered with it, as Loki chilled the rest of his body too, and Tony felt it from the outside to his own insides, far too deep, and he might have gasped in acute discomfort, but still shoved his hips back hard for more.

“Still so flushed and pink,” Loki observed, and slid out of him as he thawed. “Such a beautiful color on you.”

Tony shivered at the sudden return of warmth, Loki pressing close against him, the chill only lingering in the inventor’s extremities. “F-fuck you.”

“Mmm, perhaps a slight variation on that theme.”

A whimper escaped Tony’s chest as the god suddenly pulled out of him. “N-no.” Then he was being tugged around by his wrists and Loki, still naked and seemingly not giving a damn about the Avengers in the same room, perched on the large ottoman in front of the armchair they had defiled. He then drew Tony close, urging the mortal to straddle his lap. The Avengers were to their right, the chair to their left, as Tony all but jumped right back onto Loki’s cock, making the trickster moan hoarsely and pull the inventor down a little harder still.

“Ride me until I believe you are thinking of no one in this room except myself,” Loki purred, “for you are none of theirs.”

Tony stared down at him for just a few seconds, catching his breath and eyes narrowing. “Then you better keep your eyes on me,” he panted, gripping the god’s shoulders roughly and resettling his weight along his shins and knees for a little better leverage, “and both hands.” He raised himself up slowly, holding Loki’s gaze all the while as he let his teeth drag across his lower lip. “Pretend they’re watching you, too, and make it clear that I’m yours.” He ground his hips down hard. “While I take what’s mine.”

A low, growling sound escaped Loki’s chest, something at the edges of the noise almost a little more lupine and corvid than should be natural. When possessive, Thor had once explained, shape-shifters can occasionally seem a little feral, some aspects of themselves that usually only come out in forms other than their natural-born ones surfacing. Tony knew that the longer Loki had worn a particular guise, the more of himself got invested in it. He liked being able to make the colors bleed between one mask and another, to blur those lines, because no matter what shape Loki took he was still all Tony’s.

Mischief-maker’s hands gripping his ass hard, long fingers digging in at the crease between buttock and upper thigh like dull claws, Loki hissed out a long breath as the mortal’s slow grinding began to change rhythm, adding more rise and fall, Tony pushing himself down harder and making breathlessly pleased noises as he took what he needed from his god.

“So good, Loki, so good, my god, you f-fill me so fucking deep,” Tony panted. He whimpered when Loki licked along his collarbone and–– _fucking magic_ ––he felt the same hot, wet stripe up the underside of his cock. It set him off, of course it set him off and he moaned Loki’s name, high and cracked, but gripped the god’s shoulder’s harder and held that green-eyed gaze as he didn’t stop even for a second, even as his arms shook and his muscles burned with it and he ached to come.

“Yes, my love, my pet, come again,” Loki purred, hand wrapping around the inventor’s cock and stroking hard.

It hurt to keep going, it really did. Tony’s thighs burned and he ached everywhere and the little scream he gave when Loki bit hard over one of his nipples came with a prickling sensation at the corners of his eyes. Then Loki’s other hand grabbed his hip hard and sped up the pace with a little inhuman strength.

After that, Tony started to lose track of what words started tumbling out of his mouth. They were half-pleas, always cut off before he could even quite finish uttering them, as he thrashed over his god, dancing on the knife edge of _too much_ and _never stop never ever stop_.

He did halt entirely when he felt a third hand trail down his back.

“L-loki?”

“You know what you need say, for me to stop.”

Introducing the god of lies to the concept of a safe-word had been one of Tony’s crowning life achievements. It even seemed to help the god trust _himself_ a little more, with Tony––not to hurt him too badly, as Loki tended to have a history of doing with most people he loved.

A long, slick finger brushed the stretched ring of Tony’s ass, and began to slowly press inside, right alongside Loki’s dick.

Tony whimpered, and forced himself not to look toward the Avengers as something in the movie they were all watching made a few of them giggle. Clint said something snarky and the inventor heard Nat hit him in the face with a pillow, but he didn’t take his eyes off of Loki. He only pushed back for more with a rock of his hips.

The god’s eyes were almost fever-bright, as his clever tongue darted out across his lower lip. “Oh, Tony, how you so love to be ruined by me.”

“You won’t break me too bad; you take care of what’s yours, same as me,” the inventor panted, emitting a low noise as the Loki-duplicate behind him––confirmed by a single quick glance before he refocused on the original––slipped in another finger, and pushed them both in deeper. The stretch burned, but morbid curiosity and the dull ache low in his belly demanding more friction and more pleasure made him relax. “A-another.”

The third finger almost made him scream, and he had to bury his face in Loki’s neck and bite hard at the pale skin there, almost sobbing as Loki rocked his hips just enough to inch in and out of him, as those fingers spread, and kept stretching him.

“Hey do you guys hear something?” Bruce asked.

Tony froze.

“Is the AC acting up, actually? I thought I heard it sort of creaking,” Steve said.

The Loki-duplicate’s fingers pulled out slowly.

Tony bit down harder, exhaling hard through his nose, then released from the bite with a gasp at the feel of––fffuck Loki was already hung like a god, this was too much, way too much, pushing him open too wide, too suddenly.

He shuddered with relief and dragged his nails down the trickster’s back at the feel of a soothing, healing sort of spell, and lifted his head to rest his brow against Loki’s. “M-more,” he whispered. “C-can take it. I can. I can take it.”

Four hands moved soothingly up and down his sides and back, stroking slowly up and down in almost-eerie unison.

“Relax for me, love,” Loki murmured. “Take all of me, and more, everything I can give you to make you look like this for me, my beautiful Tony.”

The inventor forced himself to relax, and rotated his hips just a little, hissing at the feel of it––Loki’s double, now panting against the back of his neck, was only halfway in, but it was enough to feel the _slide_ of them against each other, and his insides, and Tony’s flagging erection might have made an abrupt comeback.

“I don’t think it’s the AC,” Steve said, sounding a little suspicious.

Tony tried to ignore that, but was failing, when suddenly both tricksters pulled him down and shoved up as far as they could get, burying into him, and Tony gave an inarticulate cry and arched back against Loki’s double, who proceeded to pull out and push back in, far too slowly.

“Move with me,” Loki beckoned, both of him.

Helplessly, Tony obliged. His head lolled back and he gripped the arm of the Loki behind him and the back of Loki’s neck, of the Loki in front of him, and rolled his whole body up and down with the push and pull of the god fucking into him from two slightly different directions. He got lost in it, in the noises escaping his own throat and the increasingly fervent praises falling from Loki’s lips.

For a god, Loki sure sounded like he was praying to a mortal, and that...

That was too hot for words.

“F-fuck, Loki please,” Tony whined, as he shuddered, coming again, and aching with the need to do so again, even more urgently.

Loki only sped up his pace. “Scream my name, Tony.”

“P-please, please, my god, Loki, please.”

“You taste like surrender and unquenchable fire,” Loki hissed, and gave a low moan of his own, coming hard, even as his duplicate just kept fucking, and the original struggled to keep pace without pause. “Feel how slick you are with me, so full of my come, Tony. You are dripping with me.”

Tony emitted a strangled sob, coming again, tears in his eyes as the duplicate came too and––he just felt so _wet_ , felt the slide, felt the mess made between them as the two cocks pushing into him displaced some of that come, doubtlessly ruining the ottoman under them forever.

“Loki, please let me, please, please let me come, please come with me, I need you, just you, I need you to shatter with me,” Tony moaned, low and cracked.

“Oh, Tony...”

“Is it just me, or does anyone else suspect magic is making a particular corner of the room somehow harder to pay attention to?” Natasha mused aloud.

“LOKI!” The scream left him before he could stop it, and he was rewarded by Loki rolling him onto his back, his duplicate vanishing, and fucking his mortal harder even as Tony’s shoulders and head hung over the edge of the ottoman, making him scramble a bit and grip the feet of the ottoman for support.

“F-fuck yes, Loki, please, _OH MY GOD!_ ”

Tony’s vision went white as Loki bit his shoulder and removed the cock-ring with a snap of his fingers. He had just enough presence of mind to feel Loki follow him over the edge and moan his name in tones of pure reverence.

It took them both several minutes to catch their breaths.

It took another minute before Tony realized all of the Avengers were now throwing small projectiles toward them to try and find the boundaries of Loki’s concealment spell. Like it was normal.

One piece bounced off his forehead and onto the floor.

“Uh... did anyone else see that vanish for a second?” Clint asked.

Tony slowly lifted his head and glared at the god currently splayed atop him like an enormous feline. Except that no feline had better have its dick in the ass of Tony Stark, and all.

Loki only grinned, cheerfully ignoring a piece of popcorn that bounced off of his own bare shoulder.

“You’re such a dick,” the inventor groaned, his head falling back.

“You’re welcome.”

“Mmm...” Tony smirked lazily, still in the afterglow despite his attempts to be justifiably irritated. “I’ll thank you properly if you get us out of here, and into a shower.” He then made a slightly disconcerted noise when Loki pulled slowly out of him. “Oh.”

“Hmm?”

“I... you weren’t kidding. How many times did you just come inside me? That feels...” He trailed off, wondering at the sudden awkwardness of the silence.

He realized the popcorn projectiles had stopped.

“Whatever you’ve done to the furniture while invisible, we really don’t want to know,” Bruce said flatly.

Tony blushed scarlet and swore, trying to hide his face behind folded arms, but Loki aggressively kept trying to kiss his face, and mutter over his blushing, and dammit this was too domestic for right after sex quite that kinky. He didn’t stop swearing until Loki had cleaned and repaired the furniture with a couple of spells and teleported them back up to the privacy of the penthouse after saying to the Avengers, still while invisible, “We’ll be leaving now, rest assured, and all is sanitary again, for which you are all welcome. Nothing short of magic could have saved your furniture.”

By the time they landed on the bed in the penthouse, Tony’s disapproval was turning into helpless giggling, despite all attempts to stay serious.

“Never again, but their faces were so priceless, you complete bastard!”

Loki only beamed in response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually made three attempts to write different and more complicated stories for this prompt. The first two turned into other things entirely with no promise to get to the sex anytime soon, but they may make other appearances later.
> 
> I seem to write a lot of smut.


	20. Your Brain is Sexy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark and Loki, to defeat Thanos, both dove for Loki’s scepter at the same time. The Mind gem at the heart of it opened them up to one another and brought them quickly to consensus for its own self-preservation, but the side-effects included both of them staring for a bit too long into one another’s brains.
> 
> This is an interlude shortly after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally wrote this for a much earlier Frostiron Month prompt, but didn’t manage to finish it, and I finally came back to it, and it became a bit fluffier than I originally intended, but it’s short, sweet, and made me smile. So, after a whole month of writing far too much, far too quickly (and frowning at myself for how much it taught me about being more careful and less omg hasty, damn) I’m sharing this for the free-for-all prompt.
> 
> Prompt: 1st Date, suggested by my flatmate after she read the first half and I asked her where the fuck it was going. Kudos to her, she chose well.

It could’ve been worse. At least Tony couldn’t still see all of it in real-time.

That didn’t stop him recalling some of it with a moderately ridiculous sense of mystified awe, trying to replay some of the all-too-crystal-clear memories he’d been left with a little more slowly, and decipher them further. To say they were rich with knowledge and insight would be an understatement.

The worst part was that Clint picked up on it.

“You’re making that face again,” the archer pointed out, his nose wrinkling. “Seriously, whatever is going through your head had better not get any of us arrested, or blown up, or traumatized.”

Tony exhaled sharply through his nose. It wasn’t his fault, really it wasn’t, that somehow Loki had come back to earth for his scepter and torn apart half of Hydra to achieve it, because apparently whoever else was after it scared even the god of chaos to such a degree he wanted the weapon either destroyed outright ( _As I had hoped you blasted mortals would have sense enough to do, given I left Dr. Selvig with instructions on how to safely dismantle it, if any of you had sense to look!_ ––and, Tony had been chagrinned to discover, the god actually _had_ , albeit encoded and concealed intricately throughout several unrelated blueprints that had seemed to be of internal components for the portal-opening device, except that none of them could actually work properly unless they had been designed to work inefficiently, which had been a whole other epiphany for Tony and the rest of the Avengers just that morning, after Tony and Bruce had finished figuring it out right after dawn) or lost forever in some abyss too deep for even monsters haunting the nightmares of evil gods to chase the scepter into.

It _really_ wasn’t his own fault that when Loki had gripped the scepter, it activated something within the object that opened their minds up to one another before the got could start to tug it free. The way they had caught sight of, comprehended, and absorbed one another’s plans, in that all-too-crystalline moment––the gem hidden within the scepter had not wanted to be caught again in the hands of a master it had already known and discarded, Loki requiring a solution to protect himself and keep his kin safe, Tony determined to achieve damage-control for all of the earth and prevent mass slaughter––and without even saying a word, without argument or struggle, their disparate plots had undergone mutual recalibration, and become a single plan, with multiple goals of mutual interest, or outright benefit, to them both.

 _Click click click_ , their mutual machinations had gone, synchronizing into alignment as they communicated, for those few all-too-clear moments, faster than any words could have ever managed. All had suddenly been understood.

All without a word spoken, and a whole war had turned around in an instant.

The Mind Gem had wanted to preserve itself against the monsters both Loki and Tony Stark had both been inclined to keep it away from, and had made them allies, to double its own chances, they both knew, and it kept them to its little contract, keeping their minds connected to itself for the whole three days.

And yes, maybe replaying over and over the glimpses he’d gotten into the head of the god of lies wasn’t healthy for Tony. Maybe it was, in fact, a bit obsessive.

He sure as hell wasn’t telling anyone that, though.

So instead, Tony told Clint,“Maybe this is how I look when I’m traumatized.”

The archer grimaced. “I really hope not. It suggests you’re pretty fucked up in the head if you look that ridiculously serene and stupidly happy at the thought of past _traumatic_ experiences.”

“Would you really be surprised?”

That at least got Clint to concede defeat in his preferred manner: making a face, and swearing in at least two languages he knew for certain that Tony didn’t know, as he stalked out of the room.

“I admit, I’m curious as well,” someone else added, from the doorway, sounding calm and aloof as a particularly well-fed cat testing out a sunbeam to determine if it was toasty enough to deserve being rewarded with his company.

Loki abused his stealth almost as badly as Natasha.

“You’re always curious,” Tony dismissed, with a bit more fondness than he’d intended. He had been trying to muster dismissive and stand-offish, but just couldn’t summon enough conviction, just then, with the god staring at him... oddly. Ever since the mind-meld incident, Loki seemed to see through him even more efficiently than before, his gaze somehow piercing more painfully, both because he no longer hated Tony, and because he saw more of the inventor’s weaknesses laid bare each time.

Tony wondered if the trickster was as surprised as everyone else was by Loki’s failing to reach out and poison those vulnerabilities, as they both knew the god easily could. So far, he hadn’t. ... So _far._

All the more maddening was how impossible the trickster’s face still was to read, now, for the mad inventor. Even having seen into the god’s head, Tony had only learned just how many and myriad were the sorts of feelings Loki could hide behind an expression like the one he was wearing, but he gleaned no new hints for seeing past it. That just wasn’t _fair_.

Rubbing his eyes tiredly, the inventor felt suddenly more leaden than he had just a few moments before. “As much fun as you are to host here, I have to ask: are they _really_ this bad at keeping you in chains, that you’re already back to soon?”

“Those chains were illusory, at my brother’s behest. He seems to believe that I have suddenly turned a new leaf. Again.”

“And you haven’t,” Tony acknowledged, “which is why you’ve got a lot of nerve coming back here, now our contract with each other and the Infinity gem is all over, or you have some other irons in the fire?”

Something shrewd, caught between doubt and fascination and resignation, seemed to tighten around Loki’s eyes, and in the angle formed by his mouth as his jaw tightened just a little, and one corner of his mouth twitched downward. “Of course,” he said quietly. “Just so.” He sounded almost lost.

Unable to help it, the inventor had to doubt it. He had to ask himself if that flicker of emotion had been meant to take advantage of how much he wanted to touch that mouth and trace the sharp lines of Loki’s face with his fingertips, or if maybe the god was trying, haltingly, to risk sincerity. In the case of the former, he was probably already doomed; in the case of the latter, he would know...

Right as soon as Loki’s expression went entirely shuttered and he looked away, the line of his mouth becoming pale and thin with rage as much at himself as the other man, ready to come up with something fit to tear the heart out of him, as soon as he could muster the will.

“Loki,” Tony said, very quietly, before the god could speak. “I’m glad you’re here.”

The trickster sucked in a sharp breath. “ _Don’t_ ,” he snarled. Now it was the god’s turn to bristle with sudden suspicion. “Don’t you dare _presume_ -”

“I’ll presume all I want, because I can see what you’re doing,” the human said, very frankly. “I swear to you, that don’t want you hurt, but I do want you here right now, okay, Loki?”

After a few moments staring, Loki asked quietly, “Why then, precisely, do you want me here?”

The inventor hesitated, but this time only because he wanted to take care with his words. “I really, really enjoyed...” He rubbed the back of his head with one hand, able to feel embarrassed heat creeping up from the back of his neck. “Your brain is gorgeous, and I want more of that, more of you and your brain and that kind of... I want _all of that_ in my life, but... more. Maybe. If you could maybe not cause really horrific collateral damage to other earthlings, it would be nice, but I’m not sure if it would be as mandatory as I want to say it should be,” he concluded, with a little more raw sincerity than he’d quite intended, because it was too terribly true, but really shouldn’t be, and Tony knew it. He knew, and he still wanted anyway, and the wanting was stronger than his natural caution had ever been.

Loki was staring through him again, clearly lost behind his own masks for a moment as he calculated all of the angles he himself could use, in Tony’s position, allowing a larger margin for unpredictability and error with the inventor than he gave even most of his most dangerous arch-foes these days, narrowed it down from there to which ones Tony was actually capable of, to reading the mortal’s expression all too closely, searching for threads that would suit this narrative, and what benefits they offered that other more plausible-for-fooling-a-cynical-trickster deceptions might have won instead.

Even with half a room between them, Tony could practically hear the churn of those thoughts. He could almost remember the shape and pattern of them that suited some of the cracks slowly appearing in Loki’s expression: the rhythm was slow and languid, as determined as a funeral dirge, but twice as elegant, and without a shred of genuine reverence.

Well, perhaps a small shred. Perhaps it was growing a little.

“You’re beautiful,” Loki said softly. “Utterly, starkly beautiful. Your mind is a masterpiece, and more thrilling to observe and glimpse through than I ever thought I would have an opportunity to observe closely. I knew that before I saw it quite so clearly.” He glanced down. “I find myself even more enamored with your imperfections and the dark and wicked wit that does carry you through all matters in your life, than I was the more idyllic ideas I already had about your intellect.” Then, with a self-deprecating half-smirk, he raised his eyes again, sharp and shifty. “ _You_ , Tony Stark, are more of a danger to myself than any other being I have ever met, I think.”

“Why is that?”

“Because even I could believe you might love me, and my love is as monstrous as is the rest of me,” he said slowly, not without a hint of pride in his voice.

“Have you seen my house-mates?” Tony asked. “I love monsters.”

“I know.”

“You afraid?”

“No.” He looked thoughtful. “Not yet.”

“You think you might be?”

The god hummed, noncommittal, momentarily examining his own cuticles.

“Will you come closer?”

Loki shot him a look not quite like surprise, but like he was awaiting something else first, something from him.

“What exactly do I have to do or say to get it across that I want to touch you?” Tony asked, finally.

“What?” The trickster’s eyes widened.

“Did you think I just want you to mentor me in how the universe works? When I say I want more of you, I mean _you_. _Loki_. I want you because your brain is sexy and the rest of you was already distracting enough, to me, over the past few years.”

“Oh.” Small, genuinely shocked, toneless.

“So I take it that’s... not mutual?” Tony asked, slow and reluctant, feeling his stomach turn to lead. He’d been so sure that he’d felt _something_ there, seen something, in Loki, that had translated to _want_ that matched his own, buried under layer upon layer of past experiences, betrayals, nasty tricks and other interactions they’d had over time.

“I had assumed so,” Loki said, his voice a little distant, like he was still reeling a bit, “but I was apparently wrong?”

“You... dude, how’d you not notice? I practically had a semi- by the end of the fucking mind-meld, despite the Mind-of-its-fucking-own Gem hissing in our ears. It was incredibly awkward!”

“I... had assumed that had been unwanted.”

“What?”

“I’m a mage, Tony,” the god snapped. “Lots of things can tend to be pulled along strings because of how much I want them to be, when my control slips. There is a great deal beyond my control when in the presence of the Mind Gem, particularly when we both made first contact and were propelled through one another’s surface thoughts. I still know not which of mine you witnessed; for all I knew, it might’ve been the thought I had involving you bent over your own bar for me with legs spread, and you might have not actually wished to be aroused by it, but been hit with a bit too much stimuli from it that would have normally been reserved for my own brain. It’s far more complicated than I think you even realize, for-”

“I _wish_ I’d gotten that one, damn.”

Loki hesitated. “You... do?”

“Yeah. Well... timing would’ve been bad, I suppose, to actually have a full hard-on, but it wouldn’t be the first time that I could blame you for it, and at least the armor had me covered so the others not-in-my-head wouldn’t notice.”

The trickster was staring, stunned and wary and intrigued. “What was the first?”

Tony flushed scarlet.

“Tell me, and I may come closer,” the god cajoled softly.

 _You’d fucking better_. “To be fair, you licked my neck.”

“That? When I was-” He stopped, then appeared slightly scandalized. “Seriously, Stark?”

“What? It was sexy as hell.”

“I was claiming you in front of hostile fire-giants to save my own skin, which may I remind you, was at the time, not exactly-”

“Loki, I hadn’t seen you without a damn shirt, before, and you were blue, and gone sort of savagely predatory, and you claimed the Avengers were yours, then seized me by the hair––you’re lucky I had the helmet off––to drag me over so you could lick up the side of my neck to make some kind of point about how you were planning to roast all of us for a feast in their honor or whatever, but just––understand, that it was so sexy I was about as hard as my own armor, and considering that was at the height of the second Norn Stones debacle where Amora had turned them against you for once, and how pissed off I was at you over it, all I could think of was glorious, glorious hate-sex you and I should have been having. Are you actually blushing?”

“No!” Loki said instantly, annoyed, the hint of color across his cheekbones fading instantly. “I’m baffled that you-” He cut off, shaking his head. “I don’t understand the appeal.”

“C’mere, I’ll show you. Blue up.”

“No,” the god growled.

“Please?”

“No.”

“I’ll suck you off if you do.”

Loki swallowed tightly. “You actually would.”

“I would. And I will. If you’ll let me, gorgeous.”

“Is this what you all call a ‘fetish’?” the god asked, eyes narrowing.

“No, I mean, It’s not that the blue is more or less of a turn-on; it’s still you. You’re still hot. Well, you’re cold, actually, which I do have a slight kink for, but usually us mortals don’t manage more than a few ice cubes used strategically, whereas you’ve clearly got some other advantages.”

“You really consider me no different, in that form,” Loki said slowly.

“You have some cultural and psychological baggage, there, don’t you?”

“I was raised to consider icy Jotunns to be the sort of monsters parents tell their children about at night when I was very small, and then I learned they were responsible for one of the most heinous acts of genocide the Nine Realms have ever seen, making my own attempt look rather paltry,” the god remarked. “I’m aware that I am biased. Being aware that it is all in one’s own mind only does so much, after all.”

“True. Want to talk about it?”

Loki tilted his head. “Excuse me?”

“Talk, like we’re doing now, but maybe over drinks upstairs in the penthouse.”

“With or without oral sex, as well?”

“Depends on whether you’re interested in that, or bending me over the bar.”

After briefly wetting his lips with his tongue, the god concurred, “Let’s have drinks then, while I decide which I’d like to do first.”

Slowly, Tony grinned at him. “Excellent.”


	21. Distracting Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A charming prompt from the equally charming roseapprentice: 'Loki discovers the full extent of Tony's hand fetish. (Optional bonus points if you work in any kind of reference to the IM1 line, "Pepper, uh, how big are your hands?")'

As an engineer, Tony relied on his ability to make machines do what he wanted, but he still maintained a fascination with some antique machines: little objects of decadence that machines could fix for him, if it weren’t somehow still easier, and more satisfying, to use his own hands and far simpler tools for it. That wasn’t engineering so much as it was a craft for maintaining certain dying arts, stylistically speaking.

Tony Stark viewed history through a vastly cynical lens, and had enough of a feeling that future-history would be equally disenchanted with himself. He knew the flavor of decadence well, and savored it accordingly, when he felt most in need of a bit of wasting away: like flicking the ash off the ember of his addiction-centric personality.

So maybe he knew more about art history than he usually let on. So maybe he had first realized the depth of his attraction to, and depth of feeling for, Pepper Potts, upon realizing how he had memorized not just as many of her facial expressions as possible, but could tell just by a twitch of her fingers how she’d felt about something he’d just said, whether she was facing him or not.

So maybe Tony’s obsession with craftsmanship as well as engineering suggested his sensuality might have a tendency to influence his practicality far more than he let on to the people close to him. They knew his public decadence-levels to be false, but his personal, more secret indulgences, he preferred to keep out of the spotlight, and the views of anyone he didn’t want to hear commentary from about it.

So maybe Tony should’ve caught on earlier to the fact he had become infatuated deeply with the way an alien sorcerer’s hands moved. Always. Always, they attracted the inventor’s eye and led occasionally to brief fervors of inspiration.

The inspiration was the worst.

Because the urge to leap up and run down to his lab to pursue a new idea was greatly hindered by being half-hard in tailored trousers, be they denim or formal.

The end result tended to be Tony feeling flustered enough that it was difficult to conceal his degree of distraction from people who knew him as well as the other Avengers living in his tower. Especially once he realized the trickster was onto him.

And Loki started teasing.

Never did the Stark family have a reputation for rejecting temptation, more often than charming the clothing off of temptation.

These were the reasons, the inventor tried to remind himself, that had gotten him here in the first place, and however embarrassingly, were also all of the reasons he was more turned on by one of Loki’s hands around his throat, than he was able to remember the long-ago first time he’d encountered the sensation.

The god appeared dangerously intrigued, and slowly increased the pressure, little by little, for several long seconds.

When it finally cut off his air, Tony grasped the trickster’s wrist tightly, but didn’t actually try to steer him. His strength would’ve been lacking, in any case. When the trickster miraculously chose to spare his life and indulge him both, by going so entirely still that Tony could feel only the pressure of his grip, and his own mortal heartbeat racing as his lungs burnt a little.

Then the god of lies let his grip loosen, but his hand remain in place, keeping the inventor pinned to his penthouse wall.

“You really are infatuated, aren’t you?” Loki asked dangerously.

“I dunno. Maybe try it again, just a bit longer, see if it takes,” Tony challenged right back, grinning when he saw the flare of lust in the trickster’s expression right before the pressure returned and the world turned exquisitely, agonizingly simple again for a few short minutes.

Then Loki’s fingers loosened again and Tony emitted a faint moan.

“At this rate, you’ll never be rid of me.”

“I might not mind that,” Tony panted.

“Given your fascination, I’m inclined to see how much of my hand you might take, with sufficient patience and slow torment,” the god remarked casually.

Tony had a brief horrible reflection on hand-size and his own degree of nerves around that question. _Not a good time to think about Pepper, Tony, fucking focus on future fucking, for fuckssakes._ “Now that’d require some real magic.”

“Speaking of: how many orgasms do you consider your limit for an evening, and would you consider magical means to enjoy several more than you would normally be capable of within a narrow span of hours?”

The inventor grinned ferociously. “If I say I dunno my limit?”

Loki rumbled in response. It was more felt than heard, like a purr, but far deeper.

“F-fuck that’s hot.”

The god smirked and leaned in closer to nip at his neck, “So your limits?”

“I can’t seem to figure out where they’ve gone,” Tony mused airily. “Come along and help me find them, Loki dear?”

With a genuine laugh, softer and warmer than expected, Loki leaned in to capture his mouth, and meet his challenge.

And as far as possible ways to burn to death went, these flames appealed to the likes of Tony Stark far too much. But oh, what a way to go.

**Author's Note:**

> I take prompts on Tumblr: small ones anytime, more epic ones when I throw a celebratory round for Pernicious Prompting.


End file.
